THE  SILENT 
SHAKESPEARE 


ROBERT  FRAZER 


The 

Silent  Shakespeare 


BY 
ROBERT  FRAZER 


Philadelphia 

William  J.  Campbell 

1915 


CONTENTS 

Introductory 7 

Will  Shakspere 18 

Venus,  Lucrece  and  the  Sonnets 75 

The  First  Pblio 110 

Multiple  Authorship 137 

Old  English  Terence 167 

The  Silent  Shakespeare >e ; .; 195 


69 


THE    SILENT    S  HAJC-E  8T 


"To  the  great  Variety  of  Readers!" 

Folio  of  1623. 

In  presenting  the  results  of  several  years 
of  preparation,  the  writer  desires  to  acknowl- 
edge his  indebtedness  to  the  large  body  of 
investigators,  from  Malone  to  Halliwell- 
Phillipps,  who  have  ransacked  libraries  and 
garrets  for  new  light  upon  the  subject  of  this 
sketch.  To  many  of  these  something  is 
owing,  and  frequent  mention  of  authorities 
has  been  made  in  the  text.  But  since  it  is 
clearly  impracticable  to  trace,  in  every  case, 
the  source  from  which  a  suggestion  has  been 
received,  this  general  acknowledgment  is 
made,  with  the  hope  that  no  reference  of 
importance  has  been  omitted. 

In  the  matter  of  accepting  the  statements 
of  writers  on  this  subject,  it  has  been  found 
necessary  to  exercise  caution;  a  single  in- 
stance will  serve  as  an  illustration.  The 
present  writer  has  insisted  that  Shakespeare's 
death  attracted  little  attention;  a  point  of 
3 


328438 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

some  importance,  as  it  testifies  to  the  insig- 
nificance of  the  man. 

As  to  this  matter,  we  find  the  ingenuous 
Sir  Sidney  Lee,  a  modern  pillar  of  the  Strat- 
fordian  theory,  with  a  different  purpose  in 
mind,  making  the  following  remarkable 
statement : 

"When  Shakespeare  lay  dead  in  the 
spring  of  1616  *  *  the  flood  of  pane- 
gyrical lamentation  poured  forth  in  a  new 
flood.  One  of  the  earliest  of  the  elegies  was 
a  sonnet  by  William  Basse  *  *  This  fine 
sentiment  found  many  a  splendid  echo.  It 
resounded  in  Ben  Jonson's  noble  lines  pre- 
fixed to  the  First  Folio  of  1623  *  *  Mil- 
ton qualified  the  conceit  a  few  years  later, 
in  1630  *  *  Such  was  the  invariable 
temper  in  which  literary  men  gave  vent  to 
their  grief  on  learning  the  death  of  the  'be- 
loved author/  &c." 
— Great  Englishmen  of  the  XVIth  Century, 

pp  279-81. 

Here  is  a  very  flagrant  instance  of  the 
method  of  the  suggestio  falsi.     The  casual 
4 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

reader  will  accept  the  statement  that  a  flood 
of  lamentation  poured  forth  in  "the  spring 
of  1616,"  when  literary  men  "learned  the 
death  of  the  beloved  author,"  without  noting 
that  actually  the  flood  of  1616  consisted  of 
a  sonnet  by  Basse,  which  did  not  appear 
before  1622,  of  the  introductory  matter  to  the 
folio  of  1623,  of  which  more  will  be  said 
later,  and  of  Milton's  verses,  in  1630,  when 
he  learned  of  the  death  of  the  "beloved 
author." 

However,  we  can  forgive  Lee  for  this 
sort  of  work,  in  consideration  of  his  un- 
wearying research,  which  produced,  for  ex- 
ample, his  identification  of  the  "Mr.  W.  H." 
of  the  dedication  to  the  Sonnets  with  one 
William  Hall. 

Except  in  the  arrangement  and  interpre- 
tation of  the  data  which  are  the  common 
property  of  all,  there  is  nothing  new  in  the 
following  pages.  Against  the  Hathaway 
marriage,  the  vital  absence  of  any  mention 
of  it  in  the  records  of  Stratford  church,  and 
the  remarriage  of  Mrs.  Shakespeare  after 
5 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

1616,  are  insisted  on.  The  interpretation 
of  Heywood's  protest  against  the  insertion 
of  his  sonnets  in  the  Passionate  Pilgrim  is 
perhaps  new;  and  I  have  not  seen  the  point 
made  that  Will  Shakspere,  whose  patron 
was  Lord  Strange,  could  hardly  have  dedi- 
cated the  Venus  and  the  Lucrece  to  another 
than  his  patron. 

Perhaps,  too,  the  part  that  I  have  as- 
signed to  Will  Shakspere  in  the  composi- 
tion of  the  plays,  is  more  or  less  new.  So  far 
as  I  know,  it  has  never  been  seriously  main- 
tained that  his  share  in  the  work  was  a 
minor  one.  Stratfordians  are  satisfied  with 
nothing  less  than  to  credit  him  with  all  that 
is  fine  in  the  plays;  and  Baconians  will  not 
allow  that  he  had  any  part  whatever  in  them. 

The  presentation  of  this  theory  is  the 
principal  object  and  excuse  for  these  essays. 
Philadelphia,  1915.  ROBERT  FRAZER. 


CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTORY 

No  self-respecting  Shakespearean  scholar 
permits  himself  to  refer  to  the  so-called 
"  Shakespeare  problem' '  otherwise  than  in 
terms  of  concentrated  scorn. 

Preferably  he  ignores  its  existence.  This 
is  natural  and  inevitable.  Eyes  that  have 
been  straining  at  a  microscope  do  not  at  once 
recover  their  ordinary  focus;  and  the  close 
study  of  a  subject  induces  affection  for  the 
traditions  and  prejudices  which  may  be  en- 
tangled in  it,  as  well  as  for  its  vital  truths. 

In  this  way  an  unreasoning  reverence  has 
grown  up  for  the  mere  name  Shakespeare, 
even  as  though  the  poet  had  never  written 
"that  which  we  call  a  rose,  by  any  other  word 
would  smell  as  sweet." 

There  really  is  a  Shakespeare  problem, 

and  the  attitude  of  these  scholars  does  not  at 

once  dispose  of  it.    A  large  and  increasing 

number  of  sensible  persons  now  doubt  that 

7 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

the  actor  was  the  author.  That  doubt  would 
be  converted  into  certainty  could  a  satisfac- 
tory answer  be  found  to  the  question;  who, 
then,  is  the  author,  if  not  Will  Shakspere  ? 

An  extraordinarily  silent  man  was  this 
Will  Shakspere,  and  his  contemporaries 
have  repaid  him  in  kind.  No  letters,  diaries 
or  memoirs  of  the  day  exist  to  tell  us  of  his 
personal  history.  What  we  know  of  him  has 
been  gleaned  from  public  records.  From 
these  indeed,  we  know  a  good  deal  about 
him;  his  surroundings,  his  occupations, 
interests,  acquaintances  and  acts;  and  from 
such  we  are  enabled  to  form  an  opinion  as 
to  his  character. 

The  only  other  sources  of  information 
open  to  us,  aside  from  a  number  of  un veri- 
fiable traditions,  are  the  writings  attributed 
to  him.  From  them  inferences  may  be  drawn 
as  to  the  character,  and  to  a  less  extent,  to 
the  personal  history  of  the  author.  This  mine 
has  been  thoroughly  worked  by  scholars,  to 
their  own  great  satisfaction;  and  we  thus 
discover  that  the  author  was  a  man  of  great 
8 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

literary  industry,  with  an  intense  apprecia- 
tion of  nature;  of  aristocratic  tendencies,  with 
a  touch  of  the  Romeo  in  him;  a  philosopher 
who  looked  upon  this  world  as  a  phantasma- 
goria; a  writer  of  vast  intellect,  soaring 
imagination  and  profundity  of  insight;  and 
one,  moreover,  whose  life  was  one  of  extraor- 
dinary intellectual  and  spiritual  growth. 

Such  are  the  conclusions  reached  by 
scholars  like  Professor  David  Masson,  and 
by  the  editors  of  the  Tudor  Shakespeare.  It 
is  painful  to  have  to  record  the  fact  that  the 
character  thus  synthetically  constructed  is 
wholly  and  ludicrously  unlike  the  character 
of  Will  Shakspere,  as  revealed  to  us  by  the 
external  facts  of  his  life. 

Almost  in  our  own  day  Emerson  voiced 
his  perplexity  over  this  discordance  in  no  un- 
certain phrase.  He  notes  that  Shakespeare 
found  a  great  body  of  plays  in  existence,  and 
used  whatever  he  found ;  he  quotes  Malone  to 
the  effect  that  out  of  6,043  lines  in  the  three 
parts  of  Henry  VI,  only  1,899  are  original 
with  Shakespeare.  He  calls  attention  to  the 
9 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

fact  that  Bacon  never  mentioned  Shake- 
speare, and  that  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  only  four 
years  Shakspere's  junior,  and  surviving 
him  twenty-three  years,  did  not  include  him 
in  his  long  list  of  acquaintances  and  cor- 
respondents. He  continues: 

"He  was  a  good-natured  sort  of 
man,  an  actor  and  shareholder  in  the 
theatres,  not  in  any  striking  manner 
distinguished  from  other  actors  and 
managers." 

"The    Egyptian    verdict    of    the 
Shakespeare  societies  comes  to  mind, 
that  he  was  a  jovial  actor  and  man- 
ager.  I  cannot  marry  this  fact  to  his 
verse.  Other  admirable  men  have  led 
lives  in  some  sort  of  keeping  with 
their  thought;  but  this  man  in  wide 
contrast.    It  must  go  into  the  world's 
history  that  the  best  poet  led  an  ob- 
scure  and   profane   life,   using   his 
genius  for  the  public  amusement." 
Mr.  Edwin  Reed  has  collected  and  pub- 
lished, in  "Noteworthy  Opinions,"  a  long 
10 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

list  of  doubters,  many  of  them  men  whose 
prominence  entitles  their  words  to  respectful 
consideration.  From  among  many  others,  I 
take  these: 

A  W.  von  Schlegel 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge 

Lord  Byron 

Henry  Hallam 

Lord  Palmerston 

Cardinal  Newman 

James  Russell  Lowell 

Charles  Dickens 

Walt  Whitman 

John  G.  Whittier. 

Wm.  H.  Furness  said: 

"I  am  one  of  the  many  who  have 
never  been  able  to  bring  the  life  of 
William  Shakespeare  and  the  plays 
of   William    Shakespeare   within    a 
planetary  space  of  each  other. " 
Disraeli  put  the  following  into  the  mouth 
of  one  of  the  characters  in  his  novel  of 
Venetia : 

"And  who  is  Shakespeare?    We 
11 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

know  as  much  of  him  as  we  do  of 
Homer.  Did  he  write  half  of  the 
plays  attributed  to  him?  Did  he  ever 
write  a  single  whole  play?  I  doubt 
it.  He  appears  to  me  to  have  been  an 
inspired  adapter  for  the  theatres, 
which  were  then  not  as  good  as  barns. 
I  take  him  to  have  been  a  botcher  up 
of  old  plays." 

This,  then,  is  the  first  phase  of  the 
Shakespeare  problem,  which  deals  with  the 
extreme  unfitness  of  Will  Shakspere  for 
the  role  of  the  greatest  dramatic  genius  of 
all  time. 

The  second  phase  of  the  question  has  to 
do  with  the  composite  authorship  of  the 
plays,  in  which  we  note  a  mass  of  incon- 
gruities, manifested  most  glaringly,  perhaps, 
in  the  juxtaposition  of  passages  of  extreme 
beauty,  with  scenes  of  intolerable  and  irrele- 
vant buffoonery. 

Long  ago  the  keen,  critical  eye  of  Vol- 
taire detected  these  anomalies,  and  although 
he  felt  and  expressed  his  admiration  for 
12 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare  as  "an  amazing  genius"  and 
was  the  first  to  introduce  his  works  to  Con- 
tinental readers,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  stig- 
matize him  as  a  "drunken  savage"  and  an 
"indecent  buffoon." 

These  deformities  in  the  plays  were  felt 
very  strongly  by  the  historian  Hume,  and 
doubtless  were  the  basis  for  his  much  abused 
criticism  of  Shakespeare  writings. 

Considered  as  a  man,  educated  in  the 
lowest  manner,  he  concedes  him  to  be  a 
Prodigy;  while  as  a  poet,  he  severely  criti- 
cises his  irregularities  and  absurdities,  and 
his  inability  to  uphold  for  any  time,  a  rea- 
sonable propriety. 

May  we  not  allow  that  there  exists  some 
ground  for  such  verdicts,  which  were  deliv- 
ered before  the  present  age  of  indiscriminate 
admiration  of  the  plays? 

Gilbert  Murray  probably  represents  the 

views  of  a  majority  of  modern  scholars  in 

holding  that  the  Homeric  poems  were  the 

work  of  many  poets,  whose  songs  were  ulti- 

13 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

mately  collected  and  set  to  the  "Tale  of 
Troy,"  and,  like  the  poems  of  Homer,  and 
like  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  seem  to  be  the  work  of  many 
writers  in  many  revisions. 

Taking  this  view,  it  will  be  the  purpose 
of  the  present  writer  to  maintain  that  the 
poems  known  as  Shakespeare's  were  not 
written  by  the  man  of  Stratford ;  and  that  the 
dramas  known  as  Shakespeare's  were  not 
his,  either,  but  had  their  origin,  in  great  part, 
in  old  plays  which  were  worked  over  by  many 
minds,  produced  before  many  audiences,  and 
enlarged  and  amended  as  experience  direct- 
ed, before  they  were  crystallized  in  the  folio 
of  1623;  and  that  in  all  this  labor  Will 
Shakspere  had  a  minor,  although  a  definite, 
share. 

In  entering  upon  the  subject,  mention 
must  be  made  of  the  Baconian  theory,  as 
it  has  greatly  aided  in  stimulating  interest 
in  the  question.  Although  Baconians  have 
failed  to  convince  the  world  that  Bacon  was 
the  great  dramatist,  they  have  pretty  thor- 
14 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

oughly  demolished  the  claims  made  on  be- 
half of  Will  Shakspere. 

The  writer  holds  that  probability  is 
against  the  truth  of  the  Baconian  theory;  that 
the  arguments  upon  which  it  rests,  founded 
upon  ciphers  and  symbols ;  upon  parallelisms 
and  allusions,  howsoever  specious  they  may 
be,  are  in  the  final  analysis,  unconvincing. 

The  fact  is  that  the  strongest  ground 
upon  which  Bacon's  name  can  be  urged,  is 
the  assumption  that  he  was  the  only  man  in 
England  at  the  time  who  was  capable  of  pro- 
ducing a  dramatic  masterpiece. 

This  is  an  error — a  galaxy  of  literary 
geniuses  then  lived  in  London,  several  of 
whom  closely  approached  the  Shakespearean 
standard  of  excellence. 

There  were  Beaumont  and  Fletcher; 
George  Chapman,  Michael  Drayton,  Chris- 
topher Marlowe  and  John  Webster,  for  ex- 
ample. Some  were  gentleman's  sons  and  Uni- 
versity men;  many  of  them  had  traveled  on 
the  Continent;  witness  Thomas  Carew, 
15 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Samuel  Daniel,  who  was  poet  laureate;  Rob- 
ert Greene  and  Thomas  Nash. 

There  were  lawyers  also  among  the 
dramatists  of  that  wonderful  period;  John 
Ford,  Thomas  Lodge  and  John  Marston, 
among  the  number.  Thus,  the  argument  for 
Bacon,  based  on  the  law  in  the  plays,  which 
is  one  of  the  pillars  of  the  cause,  is  incon- 
clusive. It  is  good  as  against  Will  Shak- 
spere,  but  it  does  not  prove  Bacon's  author- 
ship. 

Nothing  in  Bacon's  personal  character, 
and  nothing  in  the  pedantic  and  obscure 
style  of  his  acknowledged  writings,  is  sug- 
gestive of  Shakespeare. 

Bacon  so  distrusted  the  future  of  the  Eng- 
lish language  that  he  went  to  the  extreme 
length  of  translating,  non  sine  labore,  his 
philosophical  writings  into  Latin,  in  order 
to  preserve  them  for  posterity;  thus  discard- 
ing the  most  vigorous  and  adaptable  medium 
the  world  has  ever  known,  to  embalm  his 
works  in  the  stiff  wrappings  of  a  dead  lan- 
guage. 

16 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Now  the  Shakespeare  writers  had  a 
clearer  foresight. 

Bacon  died  rather  foolishly  of  a  cold 
which  he  contracted  while  stuffing  a  chicken 
with  snow.  History  does  not  state  what  was 
the  object  of  this  abstruse  experiment.  Did 
Bacon  expect  the  snow  to  cook  the  chicken? 
Probably  not — and  yet,  for  a  man  who  had 
spent  sixty-five  years  in  study;  and  more 
particularly  for  a  man  who  had  taken  all 
knowledge  for  his  province,  it  seems  to  have 
been  a  singularly  futile  proceeding. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  some  of  the  writ- 
ings now  accredited  to  Shakespeare  were 
Bacon's,  but  for  a  satisfactory  solution  of 
the  problem,  we  must  look  elsewhere. 

There  were,  of  course,  men,  or  there  was 
a  man,  to  whom  we  must  give  the  name 
Shake-speare ;  Mr.  Lang,  gently  ironical, 
christens  him  the  "Great  Unknown";  I  prefer 
to  call  him  the  Silent  Shakespeare. 


17 


CHAPTER  II 
WILL  SHAKSPERE. 

The  material  that  we  possess  for  a  life  of 
Shakspere  consists  of  municipal  records  and 
of  records  of  the  theatrical  company  to  which 
he  belonged.  We  have  no  account  of  his  lit- 
erary or  social  life;  and  if  we  were  to  draw 
the  usual  conclusions  from  the  absence  of  his 
name  in  the  memoirs  and  correspondence  of 
the  day,  we  should  have  to  believe  that 
Shakspere  had  no  part  in  the  great  social 
world,  and  no  friendships  outside  of  the 
narrow  circle  of  his  fellow- actors,  and  of  his 
fellow-townsmen. 

A  number  of  late  and  untrustworthy  an- 
ecdotes have  been  collected  which  represent 
him  as  having  been  a  butcher's  boy  of  the- 
atrical tendencies ;  as  a  deer  stealer ;  as  begin- 
ning in  London  by  holding  horses  in  front  of 
a  theatre;  as  seducing  an  inn-keeper's  wife 
at  Oxford,  and  as  dying  in  consequence  of  a 
drunken  spree. 

18 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

It  is  regrettable  that  all  of  the  traditions 
should  be  of  this  character,  and  that  none 
should  survive  to  relate  some  act  or  word  of 
kindness,  some  elevated  thought  or  poetical 
saying  to  preserve  a  worthy  memory  of  the 
personality  of  the  greatest  genius.  One  tale 
there  is  of  a  favor  done  to  Jonson,  which  we 
shall  see  later  to  be  apochryphal. 

Shakespeareans  attribute  to  him  the  qual- 
ities which  they  conceive  must  have  formed 
the  equipment  of  one  whom  they  lovingly  call 
"The  Master."  They  assume  that  he  was 
dignified  and  cultured;  a  lawyer,  a  traveler, 
a  soldier  and  a  courtier. 

On  the  other  hand,  Baconians  are  prone 
to  conceive  of  him  as  an  ignorant,  drunken 
boor,  and  a  mere  vulgar  impostor. 

Neither  of  these  extreme  positions  is 
justified  by  the  facts.  Shakspere  appears  to 
have  been  a  shrewd,  virile  Englishman,  with 
a  taste  for  wine  and  for  women,  and  a  fond- 
ness for  low  company  which  remained  with 
him  to  the  end  of  his  life ;  and  with  a  gift  of 
low  comedy  which  served  him  well  in  his 
19 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

profession,  and  was  the  well  from  which  he 
drew  such  success  and  reputation  as  he  en- 
joyed during  his  lifetime. 

From  this  point  of  view  I  purpose  to 
relate  the  story  of  Shakspere's  life,  and  to 
consider  his  share  in  the  works  called 
Shakespeare's. 

1564  William  Shakspere,  Shaxper  or 
Shagsper;  for  he  seems  to  have  used 
these  variants,  was  born  in  April,  1564,  at 
Stratford  on  Avon,  then  a  dirty,  unlettered 
village  of  about  fifteen  hundred  inhabitants. 
The  exact  site  of  his  birthplace  is  not 
known.  The  house  now  shown  to  tourists  as 
the  birthplace  was  not  owned  by  his  father 
until  1575,  and  was  first  suggested  as  such 
in  1769.  For  some  time  there  were  three 
houses  which  claimed  the  distinction.  The 
relics  in  the  museum  are  scandalous  impos- 
tures. Whatever  Stratford  may  have  been 
in  Walpole's  and  in  Garrick's  day,  it  is  now 
a  clean  and  attractive  little  town,  but  terribly 
commercialised  for  the  benefit  of  the  senti- 
mental American  tourist. 
20 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Shakspere's  parents,  John  Shakspere 
and  Mary  Arden,  were  a  tolerably  well-to-do 
couple  of  farmer  descent.  Like  his  children, 
his  parents  were  perfectly  illiterate. 

Illiteracy  was  at  the  time  no  obstacle  to 
public  office,  for  in  1565  only  six  out  of  a 
total  of  nineteen  selectmen  of  Stratford  could 
sign  their  names. 

We  need  not  be  surprised,  then,  to  learn 
that  John  Shakspere  held  several  public  of- 
fices. The  high- water  mark  of  his  prosperity 
was  in  1568,  when  he  was  elected  High 
Bailiff,  or  Mayor,  of  Stratford. 

One  of  the  functions  of  the  Mayor  was  to 
issue  licenses  to  the  companies  of  players 
which  toured  the  provinces  in  summer,  when 
the  London  theatres  were  closed.  It  is  known 
that  Stratford  was  not  without  its  share  of 
entertainments  of  the  kind.  During  the  years 
between  1569  and  1587,  twenty-four  the- 
atrical companies  visited  it.  It  was  the  duty 
of  the  town  officials  to  witness  a  performance 
before  granting  a  license,  and  as  his  father's 
son,  as  well  as  on  his  own  account,  young 
21 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Shakspere,  it  is  more  than  likely,  attended 
many  of  the  representations  given  during 
those  years. 

1578  In  1578  John  Shakspere,  apparently 
in  money  difficulties,  although  only 
three  years  earlier  he  had  bought  the  "birth- 
place" in  Henley  Street,  mortgaged  his  wife's 
property  of  Asbies,  which  was  in  Wilmcote, 
or  Wincot,  for  the  sum  of  forty  pounds,  the 
equivalent  then  of  about  one  thousand  dol- 
lars. 

1582  About  the  end  of  November,  1582, 
Will  Shakspere,  then  over  eighteen 
years  of  age,  married.  It  is  commonly  be- 
lieved that  he  married  one  Ann  Hathaway, 
of  Shottery,  who  was  eight  years  his  senior. 
Six  months  later  his  first  child,  Susanna,  was 
born;  and  in  February,  1585,  the  twins, 
Hamnet  and  Judith,  were  born. 

The  picturesque  Hathaway  cottage,  or 

what  is  shown  as  such,  for  its  position  was 

unknown  in  1770,  is  one  of  the  sights  of 

Stratford ;  and  many  pretty  fancies  have  been 

22 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

woven  around  the  love  story  of  the  poet  and 
the  maid. 

But  the  shadow  of  the  critic  hangs  darkly 
over  the  romantic  tale.  There  is  no  record 
of  the  marriage,  and  what  we  know  of  the 
affair  furnishes  good  reason  for  doubts  as  to 
the  identity  of  the  bride.  We  may  arrange 
the  argument  as  follows: 

First.  On  November  27,  1582,  a  license 
was  issued  at  Worcester  for  the  marriage 
of  William  Shaxper  with  Anne  Whately, 
of  Temple  Grafton. 

Second.  On  November  28,  1582,  an  indem- 
nity bond  was  given  by  two  friends  of  the 
Hathaways,  who  made  their  marks  instead 
of  signing,  to  protect  the  Bishop  from  lia- 
bility for  licensing  the  hurried  marriage  of 
one  William  Shagspere  with  Ann  Hath- 
away. 

Have  we  to  do  with  one  couple  here,  or 
with  two  couples?  If  the  latter,  we  have 
to  face  the  improbability  that  two  men  of 
identical  name  were  seeking  marriage  in 
the  same  diocese  at  the  same  moment. 
23 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Or  were  the  Whately  woman  and  the 
Hathaway  woman  one  and  the  same?  It 
has  been  suggested  that  Ann  Hathaway 
had  first  married  some  man  named  Whate- 
ly, of  Temple  Grafton,  had  been  left  a 
widow,  and  that  her  friends  who  executed 
the  bond  overlooked  this  small  circum- 
stance. 

This  explanation  assumes  a  great  deal 
of  carelessness  in  all  the  parties  concerned ; 
in  the  careless  friends  who  forgot  their 
protege's  name;  in  the  Bishop  for  suppos- 
ing that  a  bond  for  the  case  of  one  Ann 
Hathaway  would  indemnify  him  for  li- 
censing the  irregular  marriage  of  Anne 
Whately ;  and  again  in  the  Bishop  to  issue 
the  license  before  the  execution  of  the 
bond. 

These  explanations,  therefore,  do  not 
satisfy. 

Richard  Hathaway,  supposed  to  be  the 

father  of  Ann,  was  a  farmer  of  Shottery, 

who  died  a  few  months  before  this  date, 

leaving  three   daughters,   none   of  them 

24 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

named  Ann,  but  of  whom  Agnes,  sup- 
posed to  be  a  name  interchangeable  with 
Ann,  was  the  eldest.  He  left  her  in  his 
Will,  executed  in  September  1581,  the  sum 
of  £6-13-4,  to  be  paid  her  on  the  day  of 
her  marriage.  So  that  she  was  not  married 
at  the  time  of  the  making  of  the  Will. 

Third.  If  Shakspere  married  the  Shottery 
woman,  the  existing  records  of  Stratford 
church  ought  to  testify  to  the  fact.  As  to 
the  Temple  Graf  ton  church,  its  records  do 
not  exist,  thus  leaving  open  the  question 
as  to  the  marriage  having  taken  place 
there.  And  unfortunately,  while  the  Strat- 
ford records  preserve  the  dates  of  Will 
Shakspere's  baptism,  and  of  all  the  family 
baptisms;  their  marriages  and  burials; 
they  make  no  mention  of  his  own  mar- 
riage; he  was  not  married  there,  nor,  we 
may  conclude,  to  the  Hathaway  woman  at 
any  time  or  at  any  place. 

Fourth.  After  Shakspere's  death,  his  wid- 
ow, whose  share  in  his  life  appears  to  have 
been  inconsiderable,  remarried,  taking  one 
25 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Richard  James  as  husband,   and  dying 
August  6,  1623. 

Now  in  1616,  the  year  of  Shakspere's 
death,  Ann  Hathaway  was  sixty-one  years 
old,  and  unless  in  extreme  haste  to  divest 
herself  of  the  illustrious  name,  must  have 
been  at  least  sixty-two  years  old  at  the  time 
of  her  remarriage.  Before  the  day  of  the 
modern  woman,  this  was  a  good  old  age, 
and  it  will  be  conceded  that  this  second  or 
third  marriage  would  be  more  likely  to  oc- 
cur with  a  younger  woman,  such  as  Anne 
Whately  may  have  been. 

The  Hathaways  abounded  plenteously  in 
Stratford.  An  Anne  Hathaway  of  Shottery 
married  William  Wilson  on  January  17, 
1579,  but  this,  of  course,  was  not  our  Ann. 

Lady  Barnard,  Will  Shakspere's  grand 
daughter,  dying  in  1670,  left  money  to  the 
five  daughters  of  her  "kinsman"  Thomas 
Hathaway,  late  of  Stratford.  But  it  seems 
that  this  Thomas  Hathaway  was  a  relative 
of  her  first  husband,  Thomas  Nash,  who  died 
in  1647,  leaving  money  to  Elizabeth,  Thomas 
26 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  Judith  Hathaway.  Thomas  Nash  was 
himself  a  Stratfordian,  born  June  20,  1593. 
Thus  there  is  no  evidence  of  the  Hath- 
away marriage,  and  there  are  even  plausible 
grounds  for  the  belief  that,  after  all,  Shaks- 
pere  married  Anne  Whately  de  Temple 
Grafton. 

1587  In  April,  1587,  Edmund  Lambert  of 
Barton  on  Heath,  John  Shakspere's 
brother-in-law,  and  holder  of  the  Asbies 
mortgage,  died.  In  1589  John  Shakspere 
began  suit  against  his  nephew,  John  Lam- 
bert, alleging  that  in  the  autumn  of  1587  it 
had  been  agreed  between  the  Shaksperes,  in- 
cluding William,  and  John  Lambert,  that 
the  former  were  to  deliver  title  to  Asbies  in 
consideration  of  twenty  pounds  to  be  paid  by 
Lambert;  that  they  were  willing  to  perform 
their  share  of  the  agreement,  but  that  Lam- 
bert would  not  pay  the  twenty  pounds.  Lam- 
bert denied  that  there  had  been  any  such 
agreement,  and  there  the  matter  rested. 

Ten  years  later,  John  Shakspere  brought 
another  action  against  Lambert,  on  a  new 
27 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  different  basis.  This  time  he  declared 
that  he  had  tendered  the  amount  of  the  mort- 
gage to  Edmund  Lambert  in  1580,  when  it 
became  due,  and  that  Lambert  had  refused 
to  accept  it. 

This  very  improbable  statement  was  also 
denied  by  Lambert,  and  as  before,  the  pro- 
ceedings were  dropped.  It  is  therefore  likely 
that  both  of  Shakspere's  contentions  were 
untrue. 

Will  Shakspere  may  have  gone  to  London 
as  early  as  1585,  or  as  late  as  1587.  If  he 
was  in  Stratford  in  1587  at  the  time  of  the 
alleged  Asbies  agreement,  the  latter  supposi- 
tion is  reasonable.  Stratford  was  visited  by 
several  theatrical  companies  during  the  sum- 
mer of  that  year,  Leicester's  among  the  num- 
ber, and  he  may  have  returned  to  London 
with  them  in  the  autumn.  It  i3  as  reasonable 
a  theory  as  any,  but  we  do  not  know. 

Nor  do  we  know  how  the  next  few  years 

were  spent,  and  his  biographers  conjecture 

that  he  must  have  been  doing  this  thing  or 

that;   traveling  in  Italy;   or  soldiering  in 

28 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Flanders;  or  clerking  in  a  lawyer's  office; 
anything  to  fit  him  for  play  writing.  One 
author  is  positive  that  he  pursued  the  trade  of 
stealing  purses  during  those  unrecorded 
years.  This  author,  it  is  needless  to  say,  is 
not  a  Stratfordian. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  a  number  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays  were  written  before  the 
end  of  1592.  There  is  some  difference  of 
opinion  as  to  the  exact  number,  but  the  fol- 
lowing list  is  generally  agreed  upon: 

Titus  Andronicus  1584-90 

Love's  Labors  Lost  1585-91 

Comedy  of  Errors  1587-91 

Taming  of  the  Shrew  1589 

1  Henry  VI  1589-91 

2  and  3  Henry  VI  1591-2 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona     1 590-2 

To  this  list  some  add  Pericles  as  of  1588, 
but  it  is  more  generally  assigned  to  a  later 
date. 

Here  we  have  seven  dramas  done  by  the 
time  our  raw  country  boy  had  been  in  London 
some  five  years.  Hamlet,  in  an  early  form, 
29 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

was  known  in  1586.  Prof.  Dowden  calls 
Titus  Andronicus  and  1  Henry  VI  pre- 
Shakespearean,  and  Dr.  Furnivall  assigns 
1590  as  the  date  of  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  and  1591  for  Romeo  and  Juliet  and 
for  King  John. 

Venus  and  Adonis  must  have  been  in 
process  of  labor  in  1592,  since  it  was  pub- 
lished in  1593. 

Is  it  reasonable  to  credit  Will  Shakspere 
with  the  authorship  of  these  plays?  To  do 
so  is  to  stultify  our  judgment,  and  to  no  pur- 
pose, as  it  will  be  the  object  of  this  essay  to 
maintain. 

The  London  stage  at  the  time  of  which 
we  are  writing  was  but  an  humble  affair.  The 
most  popular  feature  of  the  shows  was  the 
buffoonery  of  the  clowns,  which  was  more  or 
less  extemporaneous.  The  audiences  were 
made  up  of  the  most  disreputable  and  unruly 
elements  of  a  rude  civilization,  with  a 
sprinkling  of  fashionable  young  men  in  the 
boxes  or  on  the  stage.  The  actors  were  very 
plain  people;  grocers,  butchers,  carpenters, 
30 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  the  like.  Legally  they  were  vagabonds, 
and  the  puritanically  minded  Londoners  ob- 
jected to  their  presence  in  their  midst.  The 
first  public  theatres,  the  "Theatre"  and  the 
" Curtain,"  which  had  been  erected  about 
1576  by  James  Burbage  and  by  Philip 
Henslowe,  respectively,  were  ultimately 
driven  across  the  river  to  Southwark.  Later 
each  of  these  managers  controlled  several 
theatres.  Henslowe,  a  very  ignorant  man, 
w'ho  had  originally  been  his  wife's  servant, 
confined  himself  to  the  letting  of  his  houses 
for  a  share  in  the  receipts ;  but  the  Burbages 
managed  their  playhouses  and  acted  in  them. 

The  fondness  of  Queen  Elizabeth  and  of 
her  nobility  for  the  drama  promoted  the  de- 
velopment of  the  stage.  Companies  of  play- 
ers were  maintained  under  their  protection. 
Thus  there  were  the  Queensmen;  and  com- 
panies were  named  after  Lords  Nottingham, 
Sussex,  Essex,  Worcester,  Leicester,  Stafford 
and  others.  The  players  gave  performances 
at  Court,  or  at  the  houses  of  their  patrons, 
31 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

when  called  upon;  at  other  times  they  might 
give  public  performances. 

One  of  the  companies  thus  maintained 
and  protected  was  named  for  Lord  Strange. 
When  Leicester  died  in  1588  it  received  many 
of  the  players  of  his  company.  Lord  Strange 
became  the  Earl  of  Derby  in  1593,  and  died 
in  1594.  Soon  after,  the  company  became 
the  Lord  Chamberlain's;  and  after  the  ac- 
cession of  James  I,  the  Kingsmen. 

This  was  the  company  to  which  Shaks- 
pere  belonged. 

1592  The  first  allusion  to  Shakspere  of 
which  we  have  any  knowledge  after 
his  departure  from  Stratford  occurs  in  1592. 
On  March  3  of  that  year,  Henry  VI  was  pro- 
duced by  Lord  Strange's  company  at  Hens- 
lowe's  Rose  theatre,  and  met  with  great  suc- 
cess. It  was  said  that  10,000  persons  wit- 
nessed it  during  its  run.  It  is  assumed  that 
it  was  the  Shakespeare  play,  that  Shakspere 
belonged  to  Lord  Strange's  company,  and 
that  he  acted  in  this  play;  all  of  which  is 
probably  correct. 

32 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Then  one  Robert  Greene,  a  clever  but 
dissolute  author,  writing  in  June  or  July 
1592,  made  a  violent  attack  upon  Shakspere 
in  a  pamphlet  which  was  published  in  Au- 
gust 1592,  Greene  having  meanwhile  died, 
by  his  literary  executor,  Henry  Chettle. 

The  pamphlet,  entitled  "A  Groats  worth 
of  Wit,  &c,"  was  addressed  to  three  of 
Greene's  acquaintances,  playwrights,  one  of 
whom  he  styles  a  "gracer  of  tragedies,"  the 
second  a  "young  Juvenal,"  and  the  third  as 
being  "in  some  things  rarer,  in  nothing  in- 
ferior, driven  as  myself  to  extreme  shifts." 

He  warns  the  three  authors  against  play- 
actors; "those  puppets  that  speak  from  our 
mouths,  those  antics  garnished  in  our  col- 
ors," who  have  forsaken  him  to  whom  they 
are  so  much  beholden; 

"Yes,  trust  them  not,  for  there  is 
an  upstart  crow  beautified  with  our 
feathers,  that  with  his  tygers  heart 
wrapt  in  a  players  hide  supposes  he 
is  as  well  able  to  bumbast  out  a  blank 
verse  as  the  best  of  us,  and  being  an 
33 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

absolute  Johannes  factotum,  is  in  his 
own  conceit  the  only  Shake  scene  in 
the  countrie." 

It  is  a  pity,  he  says,  that  such  rare  wits 
should  be  subject  to  the  pleasures  of  such 
rude  groomes;  others,  he  says,  have  written 
against  these  buckram  gentlemen;  let  their 
own  works  bear  witness  against  them,  if  they 
continue  to  maintain  any  more  such  peasants. 
Here  he  probably  referred  to  Nash,  who,  in 
prefacing  the  Menaphon  of  Greene  in  1589, 
wrote  scornfully  of  the  author  of  Hamlet. 

Thus  Greene,  who  died  in  the  direst  pov- 
erty, charged  actors  in  general  with  ingrati- 
tude: "I,  to  whom  they  al  have  beene  be- 
holding, is  it  not  like  that  you  *  *  * 
shall  be  bothe  at  once  of  them  forsaken." 
And  in  particular,  he  charged  the  actor 
Shakspere  with  being  an  upstart  with  a 
tiger's  heart,  an  expression  travestied  from 
Henry  VI;  and,  while  making  his  profit  out 
of  Greene's  verses,  with  conceiting  that  he 
could  make  as  good  himself. 

It  is  a  fact  that  the  emoluments  of  the 
34 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

actors  were  much  greater  than  those  of  the 
playwrights.  The  former  received  one-half 
of  the  receipts  of  the  performances,  but 
Henslowe's  memoranda  show  that  the  high- 
est price  he  paid  for  a  play  was  eleven 
pounds ;  which  sum  was  to  be  divided  among 
the  authors,  five  or  six  of  whom  were  some- 
times employed  in  the  composition  of  a  play. 

A  sequel  to  Greene's  pamphlet  was  the 
publication,  in  December,  1592,  of  a  pam- 
phlet by  Chettle;  the  "Kind  Hearts  Dream," 
in  which  it  was  said  that  two  of  the  three 
writers  to  whom  the  "  Groats  worth"  was  ad- 
dressed had  taken  offense  at  it.  One  of  the 
two,  Chettle  said,  he  did  not  know,  nor  care 
to ;  but  the  other  he  held  in  esteem,  both  as  a 
man  and  as  an  author,  and  he  was  as  sorry 
to  have  given  offense  as  if  he  had  written  the 
passage  himself. 

This  expression  is  usually  explained  to 
be  an  apology  to  Shakspere,  which  is  a  most 
inexcusable  perversion  of  its  meaning.  The 
apology  is  plainly  made  to  one  of  Greene's 
three  friends,  and  the  occasion  for  it  was 
35 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

that  the  playwrights,  who  were  sometimes 
"driven  to  extreme  shifts,"  did  not  all  care 
to  endorse  Greene's  diatribes  against  the 
actors  and  managers  upon  whom  they  de- 
pended for  their  livelihood. 

It  may  fairly  be  inferred  that  Greene's 
shaft  was  in  fact  directed  against  Shakspere, 
and  that  it  had  to  do  with  some  trouble  about 
Henry  VI.  The  passage  parodied  by  Greene 
occurs  in  3  Henry  VI.  I.  4.  Since  this  play 
is  now  attributed  to  the  joint  labors  of  Mar- 
lowe, Greene,  Peele  and  Kyd,  it  is  reasonable 
to  conjecture  that  Greene,  being  one  of  the 
poorly  paid  playwrights,  cherished  in  his  dy- 
ing moments  a  grudge  against  Shakspere  as 
an  ungrateful  upstart  who  had  dared  to  alter 
some  of  Greene's  verses. 

We  shall  see  that  this  first  contemporary 
mention  of  Shakspere  is  in  accord  with  other 
contemporary  allusions.  We  learn  from  it 
that  he  had  become  an  actor,  and  that  he 
meddled  with  other  men's  plays  to  his  own 
profit  instead  of  theirs. 
36 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

It  is  also  the  first  appearance,  in  the  form 
of  a  punning  variant  of  the  name,  of  the  new 
form  Shake — ,  which,  being  adopted  in  the 
following  year,  by  the  author  of  Venus  and 
Adonis,  eventually  replaced  the  original 
Shak — of  the  actor's  name,  and  thereby  led 
to  much  trouble  and  confusion. 

1593  In  1593  Venus  and  Adonis,  the 
"first  heir  to  my  invention,"  was  pub- 
lished, and  was  followed  in  1594  by  the 
"Rape  of  Lucrece"  These  poems,  very  suc- 
cessful at  the  time,  but  which  do  not  afford 
much  pleasure  to  modern  readers,  are  dedi- 
cated by  " William  Shakespeare"  to  Henry 
Wriothesley,  Earl  of  Southampton.  The 
classical  and  artificial  style  of  the  poems  is 
not  Shakespearean,  and  it  requires  a  robust 
faith  to  believe  the  crude  actor  capable  of 
their  production.  In  fact,  the  name  attached 
to  the  dedications  is  not  his ;  but  only  nearly 
his. 

The  adulatory  tone  of  the  dedications  is 
wholly  Baconian,  and  Baconians  find  proof 
of  Bacon's  authorship  in  the  dedication  of 
37 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Lucrece,  when  taken  in  connection  with  the 
first  and  last  lines  of  the  poem. 

These  may  as  well  be  given,  in  illustra- 
tion of  Baconian  methods;  the  dedication 
begins  as  follows: 

"The  love  I  dedicate  to  your  lord- 
ship is  without  end;  whereof  this 
pamphlet,  without  beginning,  is  but 
a  superfluous  moiety." 

The  passage  appears  meaningless;  the 
writer  may  have  felt  love  for  his  lordship,  as 
he  says,  and  the  pamphlet  might  have  ex- 
pressed a  moiety  of  that  love,  although  it  ex- 
pressed rather  an  insane  passion;  but  why, 
even  in  that  day  of  fantastic  speech,  should 
the  author  describe  it  as  'without  beginning,' 
unless  in  order  to  make  an  antithesis,  and 
run  in  the  words,  'without  end'? 

The  expression  is  without  meaning  at 
all  events,  however  it  may  be  placed  in  re- 
spect to  beginning  or  end. 

Therefore,  the  Baconians  conclude  that 
there  is  a  hidden  meaning,  and  look  at  the 
38 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

beginning  and  at  the  end  of  Lucrece,  and 
this  is  what  they  find,  as  printed  in  the 
original  editions: 

"  CROM  the  besieged  Ardea  all  in  post, 
Borne  by  the  trustlesse  wings  of  false 

desire." 

And  the  concluding  lines  are: 
"The  Romaines  plausibly  did  give  consent 
To  TARQUIN'S  everlasting  banishment." 
.Finis. 

From  the  initial  lines  we  derive  'Fr  B,' 
and  from  the  last  lines,  we  have  T  bacon/ 

In  September,  1594,  a  poem,  entitled 
'Willobie  and  his  Avisa,'  was  entered  in  the 
Stationer's  Register.  The  authorship  is  at- 
tributed to  Matthew  Roydon,  a  minor  poet 
and  a  friend  of  George  Chapman.  Shake- 
speare is  mentioned  by  name  in  some  intro- 
ductory verses : 

"Though  Collatine  have  dearly  bought 

To  high  renowne,  a  lasting  life, 
And  found  that  most  in  vaine  have 
sought 

39 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

To  have  a  f aire  and  constant  wife ; 
Yet  Tarquine  pluckt  his  glistering 

grape 
And    Shake-speare    paints    p  o  o  r  e 

Lucrece  rape." 

This  is  a  type  of  many  allusions  to 
Shakespeare,  which  refer  to  the  book  and  not 
to  the  actor,  who  never  spelled  his  name  as 
Shake-speare. 

The  first  official  mention  of  Shakspere 
as  an  actor  is  in  the  list  of  some  of  the  Lord 
Chamberlain's  men,  who  gave  two  comedies 
at  Greenwich  Palace,  at  Christmas,  1594. 
The  entry  states  that  William  Kempe,  Will- 
iam Shakspere  and  Richard  Burbage  were 
paid  twenty  pounds  for  their  performances 
at  that  time. 

Although  the  company  of  which  Shak- 
spere was  a  member  included  Burbage,  and 
usually  played  at  Burbage's  houses,  it  some- 
times had  relations  with  the  rival  manager, 
Philip  Henslowe. 

The  following  quaint  entry  in  the  so- 
40 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

called    'Diary'    of    Henslowe,    records    the 

earliest  known  instance  of  this : 

"In  the  name  of  God,  amen,  1591, 
being  the  19th  feb,  my  Lord 
Strange's  men  as  followeth." 

The  names  of  two  of  Greene's  plays  fol- 
low: 'Friar  Bacon'  and  'Orlando' ;  and  on 
the  3d  of  March,  Henry  VI.  Later  in  the 
year  'Lear'  was  played. 

From  June  3,  1594,  until  November  15, 
1596,  the  Lord  Chamberlain's  men  played 
at  one  of  Henslowe's  theatres,  producing 
during  the  whole  period  an  average  of  a  new 
or  different  play  every  eighteen  days. 

A  number  of  the  plays  then  given  have 
identical  or  similar  titles  with  Shakespeare 
plays.  In  addition  to  the  two  already  men- 
tioned, we  find  Titus  Andronicus,  Hamlet, 
Taming  of  a  Shrew;  Palamon  and  Arcite, 
which  is  the  same  in  plot  with  the  Two  Noble 
Kinsmen,  which  in  turn,  is  included  in  one 
of  the  Shakespeare  folios;  and  Henry  V. 

Henslowe  paid  for  several  of  these  plays 
41 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

with  the  Shakespearean  titles,  and  for  plays 
on  Shakespearean  subjects:  Troilus  and 
Cressida;  Sir  John  Ould  casstel,  which  was 
attributed  to  Shakespeare  in  a  quarto  edition 
of  1600;  The  Life  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  a 
predecessor  of  Henry  VIII;  Caesar's  Fall 
and  Richard  Crookbacke,  a  play  on  the  sub- 
ject of  Richard  III. 

Notwithstanding  these  various  transac- 
tions, Henslowe,  although  he  records  pay- 
ments made  for  the  writing  of  plays  to  Wil- 
son, Drayton,  Dekker,  Chettle,  Monday, 
Hathway,  Webster,  Middleton  and  Ben  Jon- 
son,  records  no  payments  made  to  Shak- 
spere,  nor  does  he  mention  his  name  in  any 
way  whatever. 

1596  In  this  year  Shakspere's  son  Ham- 
net  died,  and  was  buried  on  August 
11. 

1597  In  1597  Shakspere  paid  sixty  pounds 
for  New  Place,  in  Stratford. 

1598  Corn  being  scarce  in  Stratford,  an 
inventory  of  the  supply  on  hand  was 

42 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

taken,  and  William  Shakspere  of  Stratford 
on  Avon,  gentleman,  was  listed  as  owning 
ten  quarters. 

Jonson's  'Every  Man  in  His  Humor'  was 
produced  in  1598,  with  Shakspere  in  the 
cast.  It  was  not  a  new  play. 

On  October  25,  1598,  one  Richard 
Quiney,  a  fellow-townsman,  wrote  to  Shak- 
spere asking  for  a  loan  of  thirty  pounds. 
This  is  the  only  letter  extant  addressed  to 
Shakspere,  but  three  other  letters  of  the  same 
year  survive  in  which  he  is  mentioned.  They 
all  relate  to  the  borrowing  of  money  from 
him. 

1599     In  1599  Shakspere  assumed  a  coat  of 
arms,  after  attempting  to  have  his 
right  to  do  so  recognised  upon  untruthful 
statements  as  to  his  ancestry. 

The  design  was  a  falcon  holding  a  spear 
upright.  The  motto  was  'Non  Sanz  Droict/ 
rather  an  audacious  statement,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances. 

Jonson   immediately,    1599,    inserted    a 
43 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

satirical  allusion  to  this  affair  in  his  'Every 
Man  out  of  his  Humor.'  He  represented  him 
as  a  clown  who  has  purchased  a  coat  of 
arms: 

"Carlo.  A  Swine  without  a  head, 
without  braine,  wit,  any- 
thing indeed,  Ramping  to 
Gentilitie.  You  can  blazon 
the  rest  signior,  can  you 
not? 
Puntarvolo.  Let  the  word  be,  'Not 

without  mustard  &c' 

The  wit  may  not  be  Attic,  but  its  meaning 
is  sufficiently  plain;  the  magnificent  Shake- 
speare, the  friend  of  Earls  and  the  lover  of 
Court  ladies,  is  publicly  ridiculed  as  a  clown, 
by  his  personal  acquaintance. 

In  this  same  year  1599,  the  Burbages 
built  the  Globe  theatre,  and,  according  to  a 
declaration  made  by  them  in  1635,  "to  our- 
selves we  joined  those  deserving  men,  Shak- 
spere,  Hemings,  Condall,  Phillips  and 
others,  partners  in  the  profits  of  the  house," 
these  profits  being,  as  is  elsewhere  stated, 
44 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

one  half  of  the  receipts,  and  the  outer  doors". 

The  statement  continues,  referring  to  the 
Blackfriars  theatre,  that  when  they  took  over 
the  lease,  which  was  in  Aug.  1608,  they 
placed  in  it  "men  players,  which  were  Hem- 
ings,  Condall,  Shakspere  &c."  So  that  long 
after  Shakspere's  death,  and  long  after  the 
publication  of  the  1623  folio,  with  its  flam- 
boyant eulogies,  Will  Shakspere  remained 
merely  a  "deserving  man"  to  the  Burbages. 

The  ownership  of  the  Globe  theatre  was 
in  sixteen  shares,  of  which  the  Burbages  held 
eight,  Condall  four,  and  Hemings  four 
shares.  The  shareholders  were  known  as  the 
'housekeepers,'  and  they  had  one  half  of  the 
receipts,  except  the  'outer  doors/  and  they 
paid  the  rent  and  certain  other  expenses. 
1600  In  the  course  of  the  year  1600  Shak- 
spere sued  one  John  Clayton,  of  Lon- 
don, for  seven  pounds,  and  got  judgment  in 
his  favor.  He  also  sued  Philip  Rogers,  of 
Stratford,  for  two  shillings.  No  sum  was  too 
insignificant  to  be  neglected  by  this  careful 
man  of  business. 

45 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

1601  On  February  2  1601  Southampton 
ordered  and  paid  for  a  performance 
of  Richard  II  at  the  Globe  theatre.  The 
Queen  was  greatly  offended  with  the  per- 
formance, which  she  regarded  as  treason- 
able. The  Essex  rebellion  broke  out  on  Feb- 
ruary 8,  the  play,  relating  the  deposition  of 
the  King,  being  supposedly  one  of  the  means 
adopted  to  excite  and  prepare  the  minds  of 
the  populace  for  the  event. 

Nevertheless  Shakspere  played  with  the 
company  before  the  Queen  at  Richmond  on 
February  24,  the  night  before  Essex's  exe- 
cution. It  is  evident  that  if  Shakspere  had 
been  regarded  as  the  author  of  the  seditious 
play,  Richard  II,  he  would  have  been  the 
angry  Queen's  prisoner,  instead  of  being 
called  upon  to  amuse  her  by  his  gambols  at 
this  moment. 

Again,  on  March  13  1601,  John  Man- 
ningham,  a  barrister  of  the  Middle  Temple, 
recorded  in  his  diary  a  story  of  Shakspere  the 
actor,  which  was  going  the  rounds  at  the 
time.  It  was  to  the  effect  that  Shakspere, 
46 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

overhearing  an  arrangement  for  a  meeting 
between  Richard  Burbage,  then  playing 
Richard  III,  and  his  mistress,  forestalled 
his  friend  with  the  woman.  When  Burbage 
arrived  and  sent  in  his  name,  Shakspere 
caused  answer  to  be  made  that  "William 
the  Conqueror  came  before  Richard  III." 
Manningham  concluded  the  entry  with  the 
remark;  "Shakspere's  name  William." 

By  1601  at  least  twenty  of  the  plays  now 
known  as  Shakespeare's  had  been  produced. 
How  then  are  we  to  account  for  the  fact  that 
an  educated  man  thought  it  necessary  to  ex- 
plain a  joke  by  noting  that  'Shakspere's  name 
was  William?'  Clearly  he  did  not  associate 
the  writer  and  the  actor  in  his  mind. 

On  September  8,  1601,  Shakspere's 
father  was  buried. 

The  pursuit  of  gentility  by  Will  Shak- 
spere has  already  been  noted.  About  this 
time  his  fellow  actors,  Phillips,  Pope  and 
Cowley,  with  a  number  of  others,  over 
twenty  in  all,  were  charged  with  having  ob- 
tained grants  of  arms  under  false  pretenses. 
47 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  practise  was  becoming  a  scandal 
against  which  the  satirists  launched  their 
bolts  of  ridicule. 

In  the  "Return  from  Parnassus,"  a  stu- 
dent sketch,  acted  in  Cambridge  in  1601-2, 
but  not  printed  until  1606,  one  Studioso  is 
made  to  say : 

"But  ist  not  strange  this  mimick  apes 

should  prize 

Unhappy  schollers  at  a  hireling  rate, 
Vile  world ;  that  lifts  them  up  to  hye 

degree 

And   treads   us   down   in   groveling 
miserie, 


With  mouthing  words  that  better  wits 

have  framed 
They    purchase    lands,     and    now 

Esquiers  are  made. 

Of  similar  tenor  are  certain  passages  in 
"Ratsei's  Ghost/'  which  was  published  in 
1605; 

Ratsei,  a  robber,  advises  a  strolling  actor 
to  go  to  London,  and  learn  to  feed  upon  all 
48 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

men,  to  make  his  hand  a  stranger  to  his 
pocket,  his  heart  slow  to  perform  his 
tongue's  promise,  and  when  his  purse  is  well 
lined,  to  buy  a  place  of  Lordship  in  the  coun- 
try, that  growing  weary  of  playing,  his  money 
may  bring  him  to  dignity  and  reputation. 
Then  he  need  care  for  no  one,  nor  for  them 
that  before  made  him  proud  with  speaking 
their  words  upon  the  stage.  "I  have  heard," 
he  concludes,  "of  some  that  have  gone  to 
London  very  meanly,  and  have  come  in  time 
to  be  extremely  wealthy." 

In  the  two  above  quoted  passages,  ref- 
erence is  assumed  by  the  biographers  to  be 
made  to  Shakspere,  and  it  may  well  be  so,  for 
they  accord  with  other  contemporary  al- 
lusions. And  if  so,  it  will  be  noticed  that 
Shakspere  is  credited  only  with  speaking 
other  men's  words. 

Another  passage  in  the  Return  from  Par- 
nassus contains  a  reference  to  Shakspere  by 
name ;  Burbage  and  Kempe,  two  members  of 
the  Globe  company,  are  speaking,  and  the 
clown  Kemp  says; 

49 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

"Few  of  the  University  pens  play 
well.  They  smell  too  much  of  that 
writer  Ovid,  and  that  writer  Meta- 
morphosis, and  talk  too  much  of 
Proserpina  and  Juppiter.  Why,  here's 
our  fellow  Shakespeare  puts  them  all 
down,  I,  and  Ben  Jonson,  too.  Oh 
that  Ben  Jonson  is  a  pestilent  fellow; 
he  brought  up  Horace  giving  the 
poets  a  pill,  but  our  fellow  Shake- 
speare hath  given  him  a  purge  that 
made  him  bewray  his  credit." 

Here  reference  is  made  to  a  literary  row 
which  was  amusing  London  in  1601,  in 
which  Jonson  had  come  off  second  best.  He 
had  attacked  Marston  and  Dekker  in  the 
'Poetaster,'  and  Dekker  had  made  vigorous 
response  in  "Satiromastix." 

Shakspere  was  not  concerned  in  the  af- 
fair, and  never  gave  Jonson  a  purge  to  be- 
wray his  credit.  But  the  College  wits  who 
were  the  authors  of  the  Return  from  Par- 
nassus, saw  their  opportunity  to  poke  fun  at 
Kempe,  who  was  the  buffoon  of  Burbage's 
50 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Company,  by  representing  him  as  supposing 
that  Metamorphosis  was  the  name  of  an 
author,  and  to  raise  a  laugh  at  his  simple 
boasting  that  his  'fellow  Shakspere'  had  put 
Jonson  down.  The  one  absurdity  would  be 
as  evident  as  the  other  to  the  educated 
audience  who  would  witness  a  College  play. 
"Silly  old  stuff"  Andrew  Lang  calls  it, 
truly  enough.  But  that  we  have  to  bother 
with  it  is  the  fault  of  the  biographers,  who 
endeavor  to  turn  every  bit  of  nonsense  to 
Shakspere's  credit. 

1602     On  May  1   1602,  Shakspere  bought 
107  acres  from  William  Combe,  to 
enlarge  New  Place  at  Stratford.    The  price 
was  320  pounds. 

In  this  same  year  1602,  the  Town  Coun- 
cil of  Stratford,  unmoved  by  the  great  repu- 
tation, which  Shakespearians  assume  was 
his,  of  Will  Shakspere,  prohibited  the  use 
of  the  Guild  Hall  for  dramatic  purposes.  It 
was  the  only  suitable  place  for  stage  per- 
formances in  Stratford.  In  1612  the  pro- 
hibition was  renewed. 
51 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

In  1602  William  Kemp  left  the  Lord 
Chamberlain's  company  to  join  that  of  Ed- 
ward Alleyn,  Henslowe's  son  in  law. 

Kemp  was  a  well  known  person  on  the 
stage,  his  specialties  being  clowning  and  jig 
dancing.  He  had  traveled  with  a  company 
which  played  in  Denmark,  in  France,  and  in 
Italy. 

His  best  known  feat  was  a  morris  dance 
over  the  distance  of  114  miles  between  Lon- 
don and  Norwich.  He  performed  this  feat 
in  1600,  in  nine  days  of  dancing,  accom- 
panied by  one  Thomas  Slye,  who  played  the 
tabor  to  his  partner's  steps. 

Kemp  recorded  the  event  in  a  pamphlet 
called  "A  Nine  Daies  Wonder,"  of  which 
only  a  single  copy  is  known  to  exist.  It  was 
dedicated  to  Mistres  Anne  Fitton,  supposed 
to  be  intended  for  Mistress  Mary  Fitton,  one 
of  the  maids  of  honor  to  the  Virgin  Queen. 

From  this  ignorant  familiarity,  some 
writers  argue  that  actors,  clowns  and  the  like, 
may  have  been  on  intimate  terms  with  per- 
sonages of  the  Court,  and  Shakspere  among 
52 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

the  number.  But  the  error  in  the  dedication 
does  not  allow  us  to  infer  any  intimacy  with 
the  lady  addressed;  and  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered that  the  days  when  jesters  and  buf- 
foons had  the  privilege  of  amusing  their 
masters,  had  not  yet  passed. 

1603  Queen  Elizabeth  died  on  March  4  of 
this  year.  It  was  a  year  of  the  plague. 

On  May  7  James  I  issued  a  patent,  licensing 
the  King's  players.  In  the  list  of  eleven 
players,  Shakspere's  name  occurs  second. 

In  a  letter  dated  October  20  1603,  Mrs. 
Alleyn  recorded  a  visit  she  had  received  from 
Mr.  Shakspere  of  the  Globe,  in  reference  to 
an  attempt  of  one  Francis  Challoner  to  bor- 
row money  from  her.  Shakspere  told  her  that 
Challoner  was  a  rogue,  and  she  wrote  that 
she  was  glad  that  she  had  not  lent  him  any- 
thing. It  is  strange  that  every  reference  to 
Shakspere  should  be  coupled  with  some 
mention  of  money,  and  none  with  mention 
of  his  wonderful  dramas. 

1604  In  May  1604  Shakspere  sued  Philip 
Rogers  for  the  sum  of  1  pd,  15  sh, 

53 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

10  d,  the  value  of  some  malt  he  had  sold  to 
Rogers.  Once  before  he  sued  him  for  two 
shillings.  Unfortunate  Rogers. 

On  March  15,  1604,  Shakspere  walked  in 
procession,  with  eight  other  actors,  on  the 
occasion  of  James's  entry  into  London.  Four 
and  a  half  yards  of  red  cloth  apiece  was  the 
reward  for  this  service. 

Certain  answers  made  to  interrogatories 
in  a  petty  suit  of  1612,  reveal  the  fact  that 
about  this  time,  1604,  Shakspere  occasion- 
ally "lay"  in  the  house  of  a  wigmaker  named 
Mountjoy,  in  Silver  Street,  a  little  to  the 
north  of  Cheapside.  It  is  fairly  well  estab- 
lished that  prior  to  1594,  Shakspere  lived 
in  St.  Helen's  parish,  Bishopsgate,  and  that 
by  1596  he  had  removed  to  Southwark. 

1605     In  1605,  the  year  of  the  Gunpowder 
Plot,  Shakspere  paid  440  pounds  for 
an  unexpired  lease  of  tithes  in  Stratford. 
This  purchase  conferred  the  right  of  sepul- 
ture within  the  chancel  of  the  church,  and  to 
it  we  probably  owe  the  preservation  of  the 
Shakespeare  monument. 
54 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

On  May  4  1605  Augustine  Phillips,  one 
of  the  company,  died,  and  left  "to  my  fel- 
low William  Shakspeare,  a  thirty  shilling 
piece  of  gold." 

1607  In  this  year  Will  Shakspere's  daugh- 
ter Susanna  married  Dr.  John  Hall 

of  Stratford.  This  was  June  5,  when  he  was 
32  years  old,  and  she  25.  He  held  several 
offices ;  was  twice  a  burgess ;  a  church  warden 
and  a  vicar's  warden.  In  Oct.  1633  he  was 
expelled  from  the  town  council  for  "breach 
of  orders,  sundry  other  misdemeanors  and 
for  his  continual  disturbances  at  our 
Halles."  He  died  in  1635  and  a  flat  stone 
in  the  chancel  of  Stratford  church  bears  his 
name.  Beside  him  is  his  wife's  stone,  and 
on  the  other  side  of  Shakspere's  grave  is 
that  of  Ann  Shakspere,  who  married  Rich- 
ard James. 

1608  In  1608  Shakspere  prosecuted  John 
Addenbroke  for  a  debt  of  six  pounds, 

and,    Addenbroke    having   judiciously    ab- 
sconded, Shakspere,  to  the  great  sorrow  of 
his  biographers,  was  so  unmerciful  as  to  put 
55 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Addenbroke's  security,  Thomas  Hornby,  in 
jail.  On  September  9  1608  Shakspere's 
mother,  Mary  Arden,  was  buried. 

On  October  16  1608  he  stood  godfather 
at  Stratford,  to  Henry  Walker's  son. 

1609  In  Aug.  1608,  as  already  noted,  the 
Burbages   put   him,   with   his   other 

"men  players,"  at  the  Blackfriars  theatre. 
Great  dramatist  and  intimate  of  Earls,  as 
the  biographers  would  have  us  believe  him, 
he  was  still  subject  to  the  orders  of  the  sons 
of  the  carpenter  actor,  Burbage,  and  of  Hem- 
ings  and  Condell. 

1610  The  Sonnets  were  published  in  1609, 
and  in   1610  Macbeth  appeared  in 

print.  It  was  the  last  of  the  plays  known  as 
Shake-speare's  to  be  published  during  the 
lifetime  of  the  actor. 

Still  we  find  no  mention  of  him  in  the 
social  annals  of  the  day.  One  mention  of 
him  we  do  find  at  this  time;  in  the  Scourge 
of  Folly,  published  in  1610  by  John  Davies 
of  Hereford.  Davies  was  himself  an  actor. 
The  reference  is  as  follows; 
56 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

To    our    English    Terence — Mr.    Will 
Shake-speare. 
Some  say,  good  Will,  which  I,  in  sport  do 

sing, 
Hadst  thou  not  plaid  some  Kingly  parts  in 

sport, 
Thou  hadst  bin  a  companion  for  a  King, 

And  been  a  King  among  the  meaner  sort. 
Some  others  raile;  but  raile  as  they  think  fit, 
Thou  hast  no  rayling,  but  a  reigning  wit, 
And  honesty  thou  sowest,  which  they  do  reap, 
So  to  increase  their  stocke  which  they  do 

keepe. 

Davies  calls  Will  a  comic  writer,  or  Ter- 
ence, at  whom  some  railed;  and  for  the 
rest,  a  good  boon  companion  among  the 
meaner  sort,  with  a  lively  wit;  and  as  an 
actor  in  Kingly  parts. 

In  1610  Shakspere  bought  20  acres  of 
land  in  Stratford  from  the  Combes. 

1612     In   this   year   an   incident   occurred 
which  has  been  curiously  misinter- 
preted by  the  biographers.   It  followed  upon 
the  publication  of  the  Passionate  Pilgrim. 

57 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

In  1598  Wm.  Jaggard  published  two 
sonnets  by  Richard  Barnfield.  In  1599  he 
issued  the  "Passionate  Pilgrim,  by  Wm. 
Shakespeare;"  a  volume  containing  about 
twenty  sonnets.  Only  five  of  the  verses, 
namely,  Sonnets  138  and  144,  with  three 
songs  from  Loves  Labors  Lost,  are  Shake- 
speare's; the  rest  of  the  verses  are  by  Mar- 
lowe, Barnfield,  Griffin,  Roydon  and  others. 

No  complaint  of  this  publication  is  re- 
corded; but  when  Jaggard  issued  a  third 
edition  in  1612,  this  time  adding  two  poems 
by  Thomas  Hey  wood,  still  retaining  Shake- 
peare's  name  on  the  title  page,  Heywood 
promptly  protested.  He  wrote; 

"Here  likewise  I  must  necessarily 
insert  a  manifest  injury  done  to  me 
in  that  worke,  by  taking  the  two  epis- 
tles of  Paris  to  Helen  arid  Helen  to 
Paris,  and  printing  them  in  a  lesser 
volume  under  the  name  of  another, 
which  may  put  the  world  in  opinion 
I  might  steale  them  from  him,  and 
he,  to  do  himself  right,  hath  since 
58 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

published  them  in  his  owne  name,  but 
as  I  must  acknowledge  my  lines  not 
worthy  his  patronage  under  whom  he 
hath  published  them,  so  the  author  I 
know  much  offended  with  M.  Jag- 
gard  that  (altogether  unknown  to 
him)  presumed  to  make  so  bold  with 
his  name." 

The  above  protest  was  published  by  Hey- 
wood  in  "An  Apology  for  Actors,"  and  is 
interpreted  by  Shakespearians  to  mean  that 
Shakspere  was  offended  at  the  liberty  taken 
with  his  name  by  Jaggard,  and  as  a  proof 
that  Heywood  was  acquainted  with  Shake- 
speare. 

If  Will  Shakspere  was  offended  by  this 
particular  unauthorized  use  of  his  name,  and 
said  so;  this  is  the  one  and  only  occasion 
upon  which  he  ever  lifted  up  his  voice 
against  literary  piracy.  Indeed  he  should 
have  been  the  last  man  to  protest,  he  who 
is  charged  by  his  contemporaries  with  the 
appropriation  of  other  men's  works. 

In     addition     to     specific     accusations 
59 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

brought  against  him  by  Greene  and  Jonson, 
Chapman  is  supposed  to  refer  to  him  in  the 
preface  to  the  Iliad  published  in  1611,  when 
he  writes  of  some  one  whom  he  calls  a 
"windsucker"  and  a  "kestrel,"  names  for  a 
species  of  small  hawk ;  of  whom  he  says  that 
"whatsoever  he  takes  from  others  he  adds 
to  himself;  one  that  in  this  kind  of  robbing 
doth  like  Mercury,  but  stole  good  and  sup- 
plied it  with  counterfeit  bad." 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Heywood,  in 
making  the  protest,  was  speaking  for  him- 
self alone.  Translated  into  modern  English, 
his  complaint  would  read  somewhat  as  fol- 
lows; 

I  protest  against  the  injury  done  to  ME 
by  the  printing  of  my  two  poems  under 
Shakespeare's  name,  since  it  looks  as  if  I 
had  stolen  them  from  him,  and  he  had  been 
obliged  to  set  himself  right  by  now  publish- 
ing them  himself.  I  know  that  my  verses  are 
unworthy  of  the  honor  of  being  attributed  to 
the  writer  of  Venus,  Lucrece  and  the  Son- 
nets, but  still,  as  the  author  of  them,  I  am 
60 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

much  offended  with  the  liberty  which  has 
been  taken  with  my  name. 

Apart  from  the  fact  that  the  above  is  the 
plain  meaning  of  the  passage,  it  is  what  we 
should  expect.  Heywood  was  the  injured 
party;  the  credit  had  been  taken  from  him 
and  given  to  another,  while  Shakspere  was 
not  cast  in  the  mould  which  constrains  a 
man  to  disclaim  unearned  credit.  Between 
1595  and  1613,  at  least  nine  plays  were  pub- 
lished with  either  "W.  S."  or  "William 
Shakespeare"  on  the  title  page,  without  pro- 
test from  the  actor,  or  indeed  from  any  one 
else,  although  no  one  of  the  nine  is  now 
attributed  to  Shakespeare. 

Shakspere  never  laid  claim  to  any  lit- 
erary production.  Since  the  publication  of 
the  poems,  the  name  "Shake-speare"  evident- 
ly had  a  commercial  value,  and  the  fact  that 
the  litigious,  grasping  man  who  was  always 
suing  someone  for  small  sums  of  money, 
took  no  thought  for  the  protection  of  what 
ought  to  have  been  a  valuable  asset,  makes 
61 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

it  quite  evident  that  the  plays  were  not  his 
property. 

1613  On  March  101613  Shakspere  bought 
a  house  in  Blackfriars,  200  yards  east 
of  the  theatre,  for  141  pounds,  and  on  the 
day  following,  placed  a  mortgage  on  it.  He 
bought  from  Henry  Walker,  whose  son  was 
his  god  son. 

During  the  same  month  he  was  paid  44 
shillings  for  painting  a  device,  or  for  doing 
some  work  in  connection  with  it,  at  Belvoir 
Castle  for  the  Duke  of  Rutland.  His  fellow 
player  Burbage  was  paid  a  like  amount. 

Jonson  and  Dray  ton  are  known  to  have 
been  guests  at  Belvoir,  but  Shakspere  seems 
to  have  been  there  as  a  workman  only. 

Beaumont,  Fletcher  and  Jonson  are  men- 
tioned as  having  been  at  the  Mermaid,  the 
club  which  was  founded  by  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  but  there  is  no  mention  of  Shak- 
spere there. 

On  June  29  1613,  during  a  performance 
of  Henry  VIII,  the  Globe  theatre  caught  fire 
62 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  was  burned  down,  but  the  plays  and  cos- 
tumes in  stock  there  were  saved. 

By  this  time  Shakspere  appears  to  have 
retired  from  the  stage,  and  we  may  consider 
what  is  known  as  to  his  place  as  an  actor. 
There  is  a  silly  tradition  that  his  best  part 
was  that  of  the  Ghost  in  Hamlet,  which  we 
may  at  once  discard,  knowing  otherwise. 

Davies  has  told  us  that  Shakspere  played 
in  Kingly  parts,  and  we  may  infer  from 
the  position  of  his  name  near  the  head  of  the 
list  of  players,  both  in  the  King's  patent,  and 
in  Burbage's  declaration  of  1635,  that  Shak- 
spere was  a  prominent  member  of  the  com- 
pany. As  early  as  1594  he  was  one  of  the 
three  actors  who  were  paid  twenty  pounds 
for  playing  in  two  comedies  at  Greenwich 
before  the  Court. 

Yet  little  is  known  as  to  the  actual  parts 
in  which  he  played.  We  know  of  only  two 
parts  in  which  we  may  be  certain  that  he  ap- 
peared. 

The  first  is  the  part  of  "Kno'well,"  the 
63 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

leading  character  in  Jonson's  " Every  Man  in 
his  Humor/'  which  he  played  in  1598. 

The  second  is  the  part  of  Caesar.  Jonson 
said  of  him,  in  his  Discoveries,  published  in 
1641,  "Many  times  he  fell  into  those  things 
could  not  escape  laughter,  as  when  he  said, 
in  the  person  of  Caesar,  one  speaking  to  him; 
'Caesar,  thou  dost  me  wrong/  he  replyd, 
'  Caesar  never  did  wrong  but  with  just  cause/ 
and  such  like,  which  were  ridiculous." 

This  refers  to  the  scene  in  Julius  Caesar, 
Act  III,  1.  Caesar  says; 

"Know  Caesar  doth  not  wrong — 
nor  without  cause  will  be  satisfied." 

During  all  these  years  the  company  was 
in  constant  service;  in  the  winter  playing  in 
London,  unless  prevented  by  outbreaks  of 
the  plague;  in  the  summer  touring  the 
provinces.  These  tours  took  the  company, 
and  Will  Shakspere  with  it,  far  and  wide; 
we  read  of  it  in  the  Channel  towns ;  at  Aber- 
deen in  the  north,  and  at  Bideford  in  the 
west;  and  in  many  other  places  between 
these  extreme  points. 

64 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

1614  By  1614  Shakspere  was  permanently 
established  at  Stratford,  where  the 
Combes,  with  whom  he  had  several  business 
transactions,  appear  to  have  been  his  chosen 
companions.  John  Combe,  tax  gatherer  and 
money  lender,  died  during  the  year,  be- 
queathing him  the  sum  of  five  pounds. 

We  find  mention  of  a  Stephen  Sly,  as  a 
servant  of  William  Combe,  and  in  1616,  of 
a  Christopher  Sly  of  Stratford. 

In  December  1614  Shakspere  went  to 
London  upon  business,  in  reference  to  an  at- 
tempt of  William  Combe  to  annex  a  piece  of 
common  land  in  Stratford.  Shakspere,  who 
had  an  interest  in  the  matter,  owing  to  his 
lease  of  tithes,  having  first  secured  himself 
against  loss,  took  sides  with  Combe  against 
the  corporation,  but  the  scheme  failed. 

1616     On  February  10  1616,  Shakspere's 
daughter    Judith    married    Thomas 
Quiney,  a  tavern  keeper.   It  is  not  on  record 
that  any  of  Shakspere's  friends  of  high  de- 
gree from  London  were  present  on  the  occa- 
sion.  Quiney  did  not  turn  out  well.  He  was 
65 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

addicted  to  adulterating  his  liquors  and  was 
eventually  forced  to  leave  the  town. 

On  April  17,  William  Hart,  Shakspere's 
brother  in  law,  was  buried,  and  on  the  23d 
of  the  same  month,  William  Shakspere  died 
after  an  illness  of  a  month. 

Shakspere's  Will  was  drawn  up  in  Janu- 
ary 1616,  and  corrected  in  March,  when  he 
was  taken  ill.  He  left  his  daughter  Judith 
300  pounds;  his  sister  Joan  20  pounds  and 
the  house  she  lived  in;  to  her  three  sons  five 
pounds  each;  to  his  grand  daughter  Eliza- 
beth Hall,  whom  he  calls  his  "neece,"  his 
plate;  and  the  following  small  bequests:  to 
the  poor  of  Stratford  10  pds,  to  Thomas 
Combe  his  sword,  to  Thomas  Russel  5  pds,  to 
Francis  Collins  of  Warwick,  the  lawyer  who 
attended  to  his  affairs,  13  pds  6  sh  8  d,  to 
his  godson  20  shillings  in  gold,  to  Hamlett 
Sadler,  William  Raynoldes,  Anthony  Nash 
and  to  John  Nash,  26  sh  8  d  each;  to  "my 
fellows"  John  Hemynges,  Richard  Burbage 
and  Henry  Cundell,  26  sh  8  d  each  for  rings. 

To  his  wife,  interlined  as  an  after 
66 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

thought,  which  no  one  omits  to  notice,  he 
willed  his  second  best  bed  with  the  furniture. 
This  throws  light  on  his  relations  with  his 
wife.  Possibly  he  foresaw  her  intention  to 
become  Mrs.  Richard  James. 

All  the  rest  of  his  property  went  to  his 
daughter  Susanna  and  her  husband;  to  wit; 
his  goodes,  chattels,  leases,  plate,  jewels,  and 
household  stuffe  whatsoever. 

In  this  Will  therefore,  there  is  no  men- 
tion of  books,  manuscripts  or  copyhold 
rights  in  his  works;  nor,  although  he  goes 
outside  of  his  family  in  making  bequests, 
does  he  mention  any  one  beyond  the  circle 
of  humble  people  with  whom  he  associated 
in  Stratford  and  in  the  theatre. 

Perhaps  this  is  the  place  to  refer  to  a 
curious  error  regarding  Burbage  and  Hem- 
ing  into  which  Charles  Kingsley,  and  fol- 
lowing his  lead,  Henry  Pemberton  Jr.,  have 
fallen. 

In   Jonson's   Masque   of   Christmas,    a 
small  boy  is  billed  to  enact  the  part  of  Cupid. 
Before  his  appearance,  his  mother,  a  dodder- 
67 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

ing  old  woman,  engages  an  usher  in  conver- 
sation. She  praises  her  boy;  "she  could  have 
had  money  enough  for  him  had  she  been 
tempted  to  have  let  him  out  for  the  week  to 
the  Kings  Players  .  .  Master  Burbage 
has  been  about  with  her  for  him,  and  old  Mr. 
Hemmings  too." 

Whereupon  Kingsley  goes  off  in  one  of 
his  characteristic  tirades  to  the  effect  that  she 
had  better  have  tied  a  stone  about  his  neck 
and  thrown  him  into  the  river  than  have 
handed  him  over  to  Burbage  to  make  money 
out  of  the  degradation  of  Christ's  lamb  &c, 
intimating  that  Burbage  wanted  the  boy  for 
immoral  purposes. 

Now  at  that  date,  women's  parts  were 
played  by  boys,  and  handsome  boys  were 
much  sought  after,  and  were  more  highly 
paid  than  the  other  actors.  Of  course  the  old 
woman  was  only  trying  to  blow  her  son's 
trumpet  as  a  desirable  addition  to  the  cast  in 
the  Masque,  and  the  point  comes  out  when, 
after  a  few  words,  the  poor  little  fellow 
breaks  down  and  is  sent  off  the  stage. 
68 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Three  weeks  before  Shakspere's  death, 
Francis  Beaumont,  dramatist,  was  buried  in 
Westminster  Abbey.  Two  years  later,  when 
Richard  Burbage,  Shakspere's  fellow,  died, 
many  tributes  were  paid  to  him  as  a  man 
and  as  an  actor. 

But  Will  Shakspere's  death  attracted  no 
attention  whatever. 

His  son  in  law,  Dr.  John  Hall,  made  the 
following  entry  in  his  note  book  of  cases; 

"My  father  in  law  died  last  Thurs- 
day/' 

That  is  all — a  brief  notice,  but  sufficient 
in  his  eyes. 

And  yet  Shakespearians  of  today  lay 
their  hands  upon  their  hearts,  and  say: 

"There  is  no  mystery  about  Shake- 
speare; records  amply  establish  the 
identity  between  the  actor  and  the 
writer." 

It  was  really  Ben  Jonson  who  wrote  Will 
Shakspere's  epitaph  in  the  "Poet  Ape,"  or 
Poet  Actor,  Ape  being  Elizabethan  for  actor, 
which  appeared  in  1616.   It  is  as  follows; 
69 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

"Poor  Poet  Ape  that  would  be  thought 

our  chief, 
Whose  works  are  but  the  frippery 

of  wit, 
From  brokage  is  become  so  bold  a 

thief 
As  we,  the  robbed,  leave  rage  and 

pity  it. 
At  first  he  made  low  shifts;  would 

pick  and  glean, 
Buy  the  reversion  of  old  plays; 

now  grown 
To  a  little  wealth  and  credit  in  the 

scene 
He  takes  up  all ;  makes  each  man's 

wit  his  own, 
And  told  of  this,  he  slights  it.   Tut, 

such  crumes 

The  sluggish  gaping  auditor  de- 
vours. 
He  marks  not  whose  twas  first,  and 

after  times 
May  judge  it  to  be  his  as  well  as 

ours. 
Fool,  as  if  half  eyes  will  not  know  a 

fleece 

From   locks   of   wool;    or   shreds 
from  the  whole  piece." 
70 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Will  Shakspere  was  undoubtedly  referred 
to  in  these  lines,  which  give  truly  enough, 
the  measure  of  his  performance,  and  whose 
prophecy  has  been  amply  fulfilled. 

The  monument  in  the  church  in  Strat- 
ford was  erected  by  the  family,  probably 
very  much  as  we  see  it  today.  The  restora- 
tions made  in  1746  were  very  trifling,  and 
Dugdale's  illustrations  in  his  "Antiquities  of 
Warwickshire,"  of  which  Baconians  make 
much,  have  been  shown  by  Mr.  Lang  to  be 
inaccurate.  Dugdale,  by  the  way,  gives  us  no 
information  about  the  player. 

Will  Shakspere  was  a  successful  man  in 
his  way,  which  was  not  an  extraordinary 
way.  He  went  to  London  at  a  happy  moment 
in  the  calling  he  had  chosen.  He  was  able  to 
add  to  the  already  considerable  emoluments 
of  an  actor  by  some  sort  of  popularizing 
work  on  old  plays  which  aroused  anger  and 
jealousy  in  some  professional  playwrights. 

So  far  from  being  an  ignorant,  drunken 
boor  was  he,  that  by  industry  and  shrewd- 
ness he  made  himself  a  place  upon  the  stage, 
71 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  a  fortune;  he  looked  after  his  family 
and  restored  them  to  comfort. 

But  was  he  the  inspired  writer  the  world 
at  large  believes  him  to  have  been?  Do  we 
find  it  true  that  his  life  was  one  of  "constant 
and  extraordinary  intellectual  growth"  as 
the  authors  of  "The  Facts  about  Shake- 
speare" phrase  it?  I  cannot  bring  myself  to 
believe  it.  To  the  very  end  he  remained  the 
shrewd,  money  getting,  money  lending, 
litigious  man  of  small  affairs.  He  left  no 
books  nor  papers,  nor  anything  suggestive 
of  a  literary  life.  He  is  assumed  to  have  been 
a  man  of  wide  culture;  his  plays  are  gen- 
erally taken  from  foreign,  and  sometimes 
from  somewhat  inaccessible  sources,  and  yet 
his  equipment  was  of  the  most  poverty 
stricken  character  in  all  the  essentials  of  a 
literary  life.  Every  carpenter  needs  his  tools, 
and  Will  Shakspere  had  none. 

Baconians  hold  that  Shakspere  deserted 

his  family,  and  neglected  to  provide  for  them 

even  after  he  became  able  to  do  so.    They 

support   this    theory   by   the    case    of   one 

72 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Thomas  Whittington,  who  as  they  say,  dying 
in  1601,  instructed  his  executor  to  recover  a 
debt  of  40  shillings  from  Mrs.  Shakspere. 

What  Whittington  actually  did  was  to 
bequeath  to  the  poor  of  Stratford,  40  shil- 
lings "which  is  in  the  hand  of  Anne  Shax- 
pere  wyfe  unto  Mr.  Wyllyam  Shaxspere  and 
is  debt  due  me,  being  paid  to  mine  executor 
by  the  said  Wyllyam  Shaxspere  or  his  as- 
signs &c." 

The  inference  from  this  is  that  Mrs. 
Shakspere  was  holding  Whittington's  savings 
for  him,  in  default  of  savings  banks. 

In  this  year  of  1601  Shakspere  was  in 
prosperous  circumstances.  Four  years  earlier 
he  had  bought  New  Place,  a  pretentious 
property,  and  had  probably  installed  his 
family  there.  Although  the  greatest  literary 
Englishman — if  we  choose  to  think  him  such 
— did  so  far  neglect  his  children  that  they 
never  learned  to  read  or  write,  we  have  no 
reason  to  believe  that  he  neglected  their  ma- 
terial wants. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  Will  Shak- 
73 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

spere  ever  knew  socially  any  one  outside  of 
the  narrow  circle  of  his  fellow  play  actors 
and  fellow  townsmen.  He  was  not  even  dis- 
tinguished in  his  own  town;  he  never  held 
any  public  office  there,  and  was  neither 
missed  nor  regretted.  When,  later  in  the  cen- 
tury, visitors  came  to  Stratford;  as  the  vicar 
John  Ward  in  1661,  John  Aubray  in  1669, 
and  John  Dowdall  in  1693,  nothing  was  re- 
membered of  Will  Shakspere  but  a  few  un- 
important trifles — he  had  wit  but  not  art; 
that  he  died  after  a  carouse;  that  he  was 
a  butcher's  boy,  and  that  he  wrote  a  lot  of 
doggerel  verses,  including  his  own  epitaph. 

There  is  no  mention  made  of  him  in  any 
papers  left  by  any  of  the  distinguished  per- 
sonages who  were,  it  is  asserted,  his  friends 
and  intimates. 

And,  finally,  outside  of  the  first  folio  of 
1623,  there  was  never  any  contemporary 
claim  made  that  he,  Will  Shakspere,  the 
actor,  was  the  author  of  the  works  since 
known  as  "Shake-speare's." 


74 


CHAPTER  III 

VENUS,  LUCRECE,  AND  THE 
SONNETS 

A  careful  perusal  of  the  foregoing  chap- 
ter should  satisfy  the  reader  of  weakness  in 
Will  Shakspere's  title.  Not  only  does  the 
evidence  fail  to  identify  him  with  the  man 
of  culture  and  genius  we  are  entitled  to  find 
as  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  works,  but 
it  points  plainly  in  an  opposite  direction,  in- 
dicating that  he  held,  and  deserved,  only  a 
lowly  place  among  his  contemporaries. 

Leaving  this  then,  let  us  inquire  as  to 
the  evidence  that  the  poems  and  plays  were 
composed  by  him.  And  first  as  to  the  poems. 

Venus  and  Adonis.     This,  the  first  to  ap- 
pear of  the  poems,  and 

the  first  appearance  in  print  of  the  name 
William  Shakespeare,  was  published  in 
1593.  It  was  prefaced  by  two  lines  in  the 
original  Latin  from  the  Amores  of  Ovid,  and 
by  a  Dedication  to  the  Earl  of  Southampton. 
75 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  poem  relates  that  on  a  summer's 
morn,  Adonis  was  on  his  way  to  the  hunt, 
when  Venus  waylaid  him,  and  despite  his 
indifference,  held  him  during  the  day,  while 
she  made  shameless  love  to  him.  At  night- 
fall, he  left  her,  very  probably  being  in  need 
of  refreshment,  and  when  on  the  following 
morning,  she  found  him,  he  had  met  his 
death  in  the  hunt.  A  flower  sprang  up  from 
his  blood,  which  she,  lamenting,  took  with 
her  to  Paphos. 

The  tale  is,  of  course,  taken  from  the 
Metamorphoses,  but  is  told  at  much  greater 
length,  and  with  the  erotic  side  of  the  story 
developed  ad  nauseam.  Where  Ovid  merely 
says; 

"And  she  flung 
Her    limbs    upon    the    grass,    and 

pressed  at  once 
Its  verdure  and  her  lover,  and  her 

wealth 
Of  glossy  tresses  pillowing  on  his 

breast 

With  frequent  kisses  broken  told  her 
tale."  Kings  transl. 

76 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

the  English  writer  devotes  quite  one  fourth 
part  of  the  poem  to  the  presentation,  in  tedi- 
ous iteration,  of  this  phase  of  his  theme. 
Now,  this  amorousness  is  not  a  feature  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays.  The  authorship  is 
fundamentally  different. 

The  description  of  the  horse  appears  to 
have  been  adapted  from  the  poem  on  the 
Creation,  by  the  Frenchman  Du  Bartas.  Du 
Bartas  described  the  horse  which  was  tamed 
by  Cain  as  follows; 

"With    round    high    hollow    smooth 

brown  jetty  hoof, 
With  pasterns  short  upright,  but  yet 

in  mean, 
Dry  sinewy  shanks,  strong  fleshless 

knees  and  lean, 
With  hart  like  legs,  broad  breast  and 

large  behinde, 
With  body  large,  smooth  flanks  and 

double  chined. 
A  crested  neck,  bowed  like  a  half  bent 

bow 
Whereon  a  long  thin  curled  mane 

doth  flow, 
77 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

A  fine  full  tail,  touching  the  lowly 
ground 

With  dock  between  two  fair  fat  but- 
tocks drowned, 

Pricked  ear  that  rests  as  little  space 

As  his  light  foot;  a  lean  bare  bonny 
face, 

Thin  jowle  and  head,  but  of  a  mid- 
dling size 

Full  lively  flaming,  quickly  rolling 

eyes, 
Great   foaming   mouth,    hot   flaring 

nostril  wide." 

This,  our  English  author,  in  haste  to  re- 
turn to  his  puling  Venus,  condenses  into  four 
lines ; 

"Round  hoof'd,  short  jointed,  fetlocks 

shag  and  long 
Broad  breast,  full  eye,  small  head 

and  nostril  wide, 
High  crest,  short  ears,  straight  legs 

and  passing  strong 
Thin  mane,  thick  tail,  broad  but- 
tock, tender  hide;" 
78 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Ovid's  Metamorphoses  was  translated  by 
Golding  into  English  and  published  in  1565. 
Du  Bartas,  who  lived  from  1544  to  1590, 
was  translated  into  English  by  Sylvester  in 
1598. 

Mr.  Castle  finds  traces  of  a  legal  train- 
ing in  the  author  in  lines  335-6; 

"But  when  the  heart's  attorney  once 

is  mute 

The  client  breaks,  as  desperate  in  his 
suit." 

and  in  lines  511-21; 

"Pure  lips,  sweet  seals  in  my  soft  lips 

imprinted, 
What  bargains  may  I  make,  still 

to  be  sealing? 

To  sell  myself  I  can  be  well  con- 
tented, 
So  thou  wilt  buy,  and  pay,  and 

use  good  dealing; 
Which  purchase  if  thou  make,  for 

fear  of  slips, 

Set  thy  seal  manual  on  my  wax  red 
lips. 

79 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

A   thousand   kisses  buys   my   heart 

from  me; 
And  pay  them  at  thy  leisure,  one 

by  one. 
What  is  ten  hundred  touches  unto 

thee? 
Are   they   not   quickly   told,    and 

quickly  gone? 
Say,  that  for  non  payment  that  the 

debt  should  double, 
Is    twenty   hundred    kisses    such    a 

trouble  ?" 

With  less  plausibility,  Dr.  Furnivall  saw 
references  to  Startford  experiences  in  such 
lines  as; 

"Rain  added  to  a  river  that  is  rank 
Perforce  will  force  it  to  overflow  the 
bank." 

which  he  thought  might  picture  the  Avon; 
and  in; 

"Even  as  the  wind  is  hushed  before  it 

raineth"  and  in; 
"The  owl,  nights  herald,  shrieks — 'tis 

very  late"  and; 
"Like  many  clouds  consulting  for  foul 

weather" 

80 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  in  other  similar  instances.  As  if  such 
experiences  were  to  be  found  only  at  Strat- 
ford. 

Now,  as  to  the  authorship ;  the  poems  and 
Sonnets  are  taken  by  Shakespearians  to  fur- 
nish contemporary  proof  that  the  actor  Will 
Shakspere  enjoyed  the  friendship  of  distin- 
guished personages  at  Court,  where  he  ac- 
quired the  culture  and  knowledge  of  the 
great  world  which  are  displayed  in  the  works. 
The  argument  is  that  the  poems  show  culture, 
therefore  the  actor  had  culture.  The  connec- 
tion is  not  quite  clear,  but  it  is  the  best  to 
be  had,  since  there  is  no  other  proof  of  the 
existence  of  either  culture  or  of  courtly 
friendships  of  Will  Shakspere. 

As  to  the  plays,  the  lines  of  Jonson  in  the 
first  folio  constitute  the  only  direct,  contem- 
porary testimony  in  our  possession  to  the  ef- 
fect that  the  actor,  Will  Shakspere,  was  the 
admired  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 

Steevens  excluded  the  poems  from  his 
edition  of  Shakespeare's  works  in  1773,  de- 
81 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

daring  that  an  Act  of  Parliament  would  not 
compel  readers  into  their  service. 

The  dedication  of  Venus   and  Adonis 
runs  as  follows ; 

To  the 
Right  Honourable  Henry  Wriothesley 

Earl  of  Southampton 
and   Baron   of   Titchfield. 
Right  Honourable 

I  know  not  how  I  shall  offend  in  dedi- 
cating my  unpolished  lines  to  your  lordship, 
nor  how  the  world  will  censure  me  for  choos- 
ing so  strong  a  prop  to  support  so  weak  a 
burden;  only  if  your  honour  seems  but 
pleased,  I  account  myself  highly  praised,  and 
vow  to  take  advantage  of  all  idle  hours  till 
I  have  honoured  you  with  some  greater 
labour.  But  if  the  first  heir  of  my  invention 
prove  deformed,  I  shall  be  sorry  it  had  so 
noble  a  godfather,  and  never  after  ear  so 
barren  a  land,  for  fear  it  yield  me  still  so  bad 
a  harvest.  I  leave  it  to  your  honourable  sur- 
vey, and  your  honour  to  your  heart's  con- 
tent; which  I  wish  may  always  answer  your 
82 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

own  wish  and  the  world's  hopeful  expecta- 
tion. 

Your  Honours  in  all  duty, 

William  Shakespeare. 

The  author  says  that  if  this,  his  first  at- 
tempt, be  successful,  he  will  offer  something 
more  serious.  Seven  editions  of  Venus,  and 
five  of  Lucrece,  were  issued  by  1616,  thus 
justifying  the  author's  hopes. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  poems 
and  Sonnets  were  not  included  in  the  first 
folio,  so  that  the  support  of  Jonson's  iden- 
tification does  not  extend  to  them. 

The  name  "Shakespeare"  to  which  we  are 
here  introduced  for  the  first  time,  was  not 
the  actor's  name.  Although,  as  is  well  known, 
there  was  no  standard  of  spelling  in  Shak- 
spere's  day,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  in  all  the 
variants  of  the  name  prior  to  1593,  its  first 
syllable  is  short;  as  Shag,  Shack,  Shak,  or 
Shax.  Its  original  meaning  was  a  common 
spearman,  the  first  syllable  meaning  rough, 
or  rascal,  and  the  last  spear,  or  perhaps  spur. 
83 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  conception  of  shaking  a  spear  does  not 
enter  into  the  name. 

The  existing  so  called  signatures, 
whether  written  by  Shakspere  himself  or  by  a 
scrivener,  are  in  the  form  Shaksper  and 
Shaxper.  It  would  seem  that  even  Shake- 
spearians  should  admit  the  form  Shake- 
speare to  be  a  pen  name,  devised,  if  not  by 
the  actor  himself,  then  by  another. 

The  poem  is  the  work  of  a  scholar,  and  it 
is  our  theory  that  Will  Shakspere,  at  the 
time  only  a  few  years  in  London,  was  inca- 
pable of  its  authorship. 

From  our  point  of  view  therefore,  it  is 
permissible  to  conjecture  that  the  rising  of 
the  name  Shakespeare  on  the  literary  horizon 
at  the  time,  was  an  independent  happening, 
in  some  way  coincident,  and  perhaps  con- 
nected with  Shakspere's  London  career;  and 
to  inquire  who  might  have  found  it  conven- 
ient to  set  a  pen  name  to  his  work,  as  well  as 
who  would  have  been  likely  to  choose  such 
a  name  as  Shakespeare,  which  added  to  a 
84 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

classical  composition  the  classical  suggestion 
of  Pallas  Athene,  the  goddess. 

It  is  extremely  improbable,  for  instance, 
that  any  professed  poet,  desiring  the  advan- 
tage of  a  distinguished  patronage  to  god- 
father his  essay,  would  deliberately  resign 
that  advantage  by  concealing  his  identity 
under  an  assumed  name.  Rather  would  he 
have  been  particularly  careful  to  place  his 
own  name  to  the  dedication. 

This  consideration  would  seem  to  exclude 
the  known  poets  from  the  number  of  possi- 
bilities. Mr.  T.  W.  White  ascribes  the  Venus 
to  Marlowe  on  internal  evidence.  But  why 
should  not  Marlowe  have  used  his  own  name. 

At  the  time  the  Venus  appeared,  Will 
Shakspere  was  in  the  service  of  Lord  Strange, 
to  whose  company  he  belonged,  and  it  would 
have  been  unsuitable  for  him  to  have  ad- 
dressed himself  to  another  patron.  Had  he 
been  capable  of  writing  such  verse,  he  would 
undoubtedly  have  addressed  Lord  Strange  as 
his  patron. 

Thus  the  scope  of  our  inquiry,  after 
85 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

eliminating,  as  we  seem  bound  to  do,  the 
actor,  and  the  known  poets,  is  very  consider- 
ably narrowed. 

Raleigh  or  Sidney  have  been  thought  pos- 
sibilities, but,  admitting  even  that  they  might 
have  wished  to  conceal  their  identity  for  the 
moment,  can  it  be  explained  why  either  of 
them  should  address  in  so  humble  a  style,  a 
youngster  of  half  their  age,  and  no  more  than 
their  equal  in  family  or  position.  It  must 
be  confessed  that,  in  this  case  at  least,  the 
trail  leads  rather  plainly  Baconwards. 

Although  the  only  verses  positively 
known  as  Bacon's,  that  remain  to  us,  are  his 
metrical  versions  of  seven  of  the  Psalms,  and 
less  surely,  a  rendering  of  a  Greek  epigram, 
and  a  dozen  other  lines,  all  of  them  of  in- 
ferior merit;  yet  it  is  known  that  by  some 
he  was  accounted  a  poet. 

In  1603  Bacon  wrote  to  Sir  John  Davies, 
when  James  was  on  his  way  to  England; 

"I  commend  myself  to  your  love 
and  the  well  using  of  my  name     .     . 
so  desiring  you  to  be  good  to  all  con- 
cealed poets  &c" 
86 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

And  in  his  Apology,  published  in  1604, 
Bacon  says; 

"I  had  prepared  a  Sonnet  tending 
to  her  Majesty's  reconcilement  to  my 
Lord   (Essex)   which  I  remember  I 
also  showed  to  a  great  person,  one  of 
my  Lord's  nearest  friends  &c" 
Also,  John  Davies  of  Hereford,  in  his 
Scourge  of  Folly,  published  in  1610,  says 
that  Bacon's  wit  compelled  him  to  write; 

"And  to  thy  health  in  Helicon  to  drinke 
As  to  her  Ballamour  the  Muse  is 

wont; 
For  thou  dost  her  embosom ;  and  dost 

use 

Her  company  for  sport  twixt  grave 
affairs." 

In  Stow's  Annals,  published  in  1615, 
Bacon's  name  occurs  as  the  seventh  in  a  list 
of  27  Elizabethan  poets.  This  was  prior  to 
his  versification  of  the  Psalms. 

So  that  it  is  evident  that  we  do  not  pos- 
sess all  of  Bacon's  poems  as  his  acknowl- 
edged work. 

87 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

In  1593  Bacon  was  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment, taking  a  prominent  part  in  political  af- 
fairs, heavily  in  debt  and  a  keen  competitor 
for  the  important  post  of  Attorney  General. 
Essex,  with  whom  he  was  intimate,  was  back- 
ing his  application  strongly.  Southampton 
was  one  of  Essex'  intimates,  and  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  under  the  circumstances  Bacon 
might  desire  to  compliment  Southampton 
and  gain  his  support,  without  making  a  pub- 
lic avowal  of  his  authorship.  The  Queen  al- 
ready held  his  attainments  rather  lightly, 
esteeming  them  but  superficial,  and  it  might 
have  gravely  endangered  his  chance  of  ob- 
taining this  serious  and  weighty  position 
were  it  generally  known  that  he  was  flirting 
so  amorously  with  the  Muse. 

As  to  the  choice  of  Shakespeare  as  a  pen 
name,  we  may  observe  first  that  something 
like  it  had  been  known  before,  since  we  learn 
from  Disraeli's  Curiosities  of  Literature  that 
the  names  Spavento,  horrid  fright ;  and  Spiz- 
zafer,  shiver  spear,  were  in  use  by  the  Ital- 
ian pantomimists. 

88 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  attack  made  by  Greene  in  1592  upon 
the  actor,  as  Shake  scene,  may  have  been  a 
factor  in  the  adoption,  and  adaptation  of  the 
name  Shake  speare,  this  as  has  been  said, 
having  been  the  first  appearance  ,of  Shake, 
instead  of  Shak,  in  the  actor's  name. 

However  that  may  be,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  Bacon  was  connected  in  some  way  with 
the  device,  for  not  only  did  La  Jessee,  secre- 
tary to  the  Due  d'Anjou,  address  a  Sonnet 
to  Bacon  in  1595,  in  which  he  speaks  of 
'votre  Pallas/  but  Bacon  himself,  in  the  same 
year,  connected  the  hyphenated  name  with 
Pallas,  in  his  Essex  device.  Then  we  have 
Jonson  in  1623  writing; 

"In  each  of  which  he  seems  to  shake 

a  lance 
As     brandished     at     the     eyes     of 

ignorance." 

Thus  we  have  the  name  Shakespeare 
connected  with  Pallas,  and  Pallas  connected 
with  Bacon;  and  we  find  the  idea  very  suit- 
able to  a  man  with  Bacon's  turn  of  mind; 
Shake-speare,  the  goddess  of  wisdom,  fully 
89 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

armed,  shaking  her  spear;  not  the  actor  Will 
Shakspere's  name,  but  sufficiently  like  it  to 
serve  for  a  cloak. 

And  so,  it  may  be,  the  name  Shake 
speare  was  born ;  and  the  success  of  the  poem 
gave  it  popularity  and  commercial  value. 

The  Rape  of  Lucrece.     The   Lucrece   was 

published  in  1594, 

and  is  undoubtedly  by  the  same  hand  as  the 
Venus,  being  just  as  classical  and  just  as 
amorous. 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the 
curious  connection  between  the  "without  end" 
and  "without  beginning"  of  the  dedication; 
and  the  finding  of  "Fr  B"  in  the  first  words 
of  the  first  two  lines,  and  of  "F  Bacon"  in 
the  last  words  of  the  two  concluding  lines  of 
the  poem. 

That  a  lawyer  wrote  the  Lucrece  seems 
quite  clear,  as  Mr.  Castle  has  pointed  out. 
The  author  brings  in  expressions  learned  in 
the  court  house,  in  the  most  tragic  moments 
of  the  story. 

90 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Thus  Tarquin,  debating  whether  or  no 
he  shall  commit  the  crime,  says; 

"Why  hunt  I  then  for  color  or  ex- 
cuse," color  being  a  legal  term  'for  a 
shadow  of  a  reason. 

And  Lucrece  is  as  good  a  lawyer  as  he, 
when  she  inquires ; 

"Under  what  color  he  commits  this 
ill." 

The  deed  being  done,  she  finds  time  in 
her  tempest  of  grief  to  think  of  a  register's 
office  to  find  a  name  for  Night ; 

"Dim  register  and  notary  of 
shame,"  and  this  leads  her  to  think  of 
another  simile; 

"Sin  ne'er  gives  a  fee;  He  gratis 
comes;"  and  she  goes  on  to  describe 
Tarquin  in  terms  which  a  lawyer 
might  use  in  denouncing  an  opponent. 

Of  Collatine  she  says; 

"I  will  not  poison  thee  with  my 
attaint," 

She  recalls  the  adventures  of  Helen  and 
91 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Paris,  the  connection  of  which  with  her  own 
case  is  obscure,  and  occasion  is  taken  to  bring 
in  a  description  of  a  picture  of  Troy,  with 
the  Trojans  watching  the  Greeks  from  the 
city  walls,  which  fills  seventy  six  lines  of  the 
poem. 

The  following  lines,  written  by  Bacon  in 
1624,  are  taken  from  his  version  of  the  104th 
Psalm.  At  this  period  Bacon  was  sixty  three 
years  old,  and  a  sick  man.  Even  with  these 
handicaps,  and  that  of  the  difficulty  of  the 
subject,  the  lines  are  not  inferior  to  many  of 
those  in  the  Lucrece; 

"Father  and  King  of  Powers  both  high 

and  low 
Whose  sounding  Fame  all  creatures 

serve  to  blow, 
My  soul  shall  with  the  rest  strike  up 

thy  praise 

And  caroll  of  thy  workes  and  won- 
drous waies. 
*  *  *  * 

The    clouds    as    chariots    swift    doe 
secure  the  sky 
92 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  stormy  winds  upon  their  wings 
doe  fly 

His  Angels  spirits  are,  that  wait  his 
Will 

As  Flames  of  Fire  his  anger  they  ful- 
fill. 
*  *  *  * 

Let  all  his  works  praise  him  with  one 

accord, 
Oh,  praise  the  Lord,  my  Soule ;  praise 

ye  the  Lord." 

Milton  did  far  worse  in  his  translation 
of  a  Psalm,  and  surely  this  specimen  of 
verses,  indisputably  by  Bacon,  compares 
quite  favorably  with  the  one  undisputed 
poetical  composition  of  Will  Shakspere, 
actor,  which  commences; 

"Good  Frend  for  Jesus  sake  forbeare 
To  digg  the  dust  encloased  heare." 

The  Sonnets.     The  first  mention  of  the  Son- 
nets was  made  in  1598,  when 
Francis  Meres  published  his  Palladis  Tamia, 
or  Wits  Treasury,  containing  a  partial  list 
of  the  authors  of  the  day  who  "have  enriched 
the  English  tongue."   He  says; 
93 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

"The  sweet  witty  soul  of  Ovid  lives 
in  mellifluous  honey  tongued  Shake- 
speare;    witness     his     Venus     and 
Adonis,  his  Lucrece,  his  sugred  son- 
nets among  his  private  friends  &c." 
In  1599  Jaggard  included  two  of  the  son- 
nets, Nos.  138  and  144,  in  the  collection  en- 
titled the  Passionate  Pilgrim. 

In  1609  the  Sonnets,  as  we  know  them, 
were  published  under  the  title; 

"Shake-speare's  Sonnets  never  before 

imprinted" 

with  a  fantastic  dedication  which  has  given 
much  concern  to  the  critics; 

"To  the  onlie  begetter  of 

These  insuing  Sonnets 

Mr.  W.  H.  all  happiness 

And  that  eternitie 

promised 

by 
Our  everliving  poet 

wisheth 

the  well  wishing 

Adventurer  in 

setting 

forth 

np    'T1  » 

94 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Since  the  whole  superstructure  which  has 
been  built  up,  of  friendships  existing  between 
Will  Shakspere  and  members  of  the  beau 
monde,  rests  solely  upon  the  dedications  pre- 
fixed to  the  poems,  frantic  efforts  have  been 
made  to  connect  the  actor  with  some  impor- 
tant personage  who  is  assumed  to  be  alluded 
to  in  this  above  dedication,  and  to  be  the 
friend  addressed  in  the  Sonnets  themselves. 

Thus  the  "onlie  begetter"  and  the  "Mr. 
W.  H."  of  the  dedication  have  been  arbi- 
trarily transformed  into  "the  author's 
friend"  and  "Lord  so  and  so,"  no  agreement 
having  yet  been  reached  as  which  particu- 
lar Lord  was  denoted  by  Mr.  W.  H.  Among 
the  suggested  names  are  those  of  Southamp- 
ton, Pembroke,  Raleigh,  Hervey,  and  a  com- 
moner, one  William  Hewes. 

Now,  mark  the  unreasonableness  of 
these  attempts ;  a  begetter  is  either  the  author, 
or  else  the  one  who  gets;  that  is  to  say,  the 
collector. 

Nor   could   an   humble  publisher,   like 
Thomas  Thorpe,  the  T.  T.  who  signed  the 
dedication,  have  ventured  to  address  the  Earl 
95 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

of  Southampton,  the  Right  Honorable  Will- 
iam Herbert,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  or  Sir 
William  Hervey,  as  plain  "Mr.  W.  H."  Even 
to-day  it  would  be  inconceivable  presumption 
to  do  so. 

These  verses  were  composed,  it  is  sup- 
posed, in  great  part  if  not  wholly,  between  the 
years  1595  and  1598,  when  they  were  men- 
tioned by  Meres,  the  latest  about  1603. 

They  were  not  for  sale,  according  to  Son- 
net 21,  but  for  private  circulation,  and  were 
handed  about  for  some  years.  By  1609  some 
one  had  got  hold  of  those  that  we  now  pos- 
sess, and  gave  them  to  his  publisher  friend, 
who  then  printed  them.  The  dedication  is  not 
addressed  by  the  author  to  his  patron,  but 
by  the  publisher  to  the  friend  who  has  pre- 
sented him  with  an  opportunity  for  a  pub- 
lishing venture. 

"Mr.  W.  H."  is  undoubtedly  one  William 
Hall,  as  appears  from  the  dedication  itself; 

"Mr.  W.  Hall." 

In  the  Isham  reprints  there  is  a  poem  by 
Robert  Southwell,  the  dedication  to  which 
reads;  "W.  H.  wisheth  with  long  life  a  pros- 
96 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

perous  achievement  of  his  good  desires." 
Southwell's  poem  was  procured  by  William 
Hall,  and  printed  for  him  by  G.  Eld,  who 
was  also  the  printer  of  the  Shakespeare  Son- 
nets for  Thorpe. 

"And  that  eternitie  promised  by  our  ever- 
living  poet."  This  poet  was  the  author  of 
the  Sonnets,  who  insists  in  many  places  upon 
this  eternity;  as  in  Sonnets  18,  19,  55,  63,  65, 
and  in  several  others.  Still  are  we  debating 
who  this  poet  and  his  friend  may  be. 

There  is  no  doubt  about  "T.  T."  for  his 
name  is  found  in  the  Register  of  the  Station- 
ers Company; 

"20  May  1609,  Thomas  Thorpe,  a 
book  called  Shake-speare's  Sonnets." 
Thus  the  much  discussed  dedication  re- 
solves itself  into  the  following; 
To  the  Procurer 
of  these  Sonnets 

Mr  W  Hall; 

happiness    and  the  eternity 
promised  by  their  author 

is  the  wish  of 
the  enterprising  publisher 

Thomas  Thorpe. 
97 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

In  1598,  which  we  may  take  to  be  about 
the  date  when  the  majority  of  the  Sonnets 
had  been  composed,  Pembroke,  as  William 
Herbert  became  in  1601,  was  only  18  years 
old;  Southampton  was  25;  Essex  31  years; 
Will  Shakspere  34;  Bacon  37;  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  44,  and  Raleigh  46  years  old. 

The  Sonnets  number  154;  of  which  the 
first  seventeen  are  known  as  the  Procreative 
Sonnets,  being  addressed  to  a  young  man  who 
is  advised  to  reproduce  himself,  "for  love  of 
me."  The  feverish  anxiety  expressed  by  one 
man  concerning  another  man's  procreative 
exercises  is  too  much  overdone  to  be  more 
than  an  affectation. 

Sonnets  18-126  continue  to  be  ad- 
dressed, in  a  very  passionate  strain,  to  a  man. 
The  poet  describes  himself  as  old  and  selfish, 
while  his  love  is  a  boy.  There  are  hints  of  a 
quarrel,  of  jealousy  of  other  men,  of  forgive- 
ness, of  shame,  and  of  a  scandal;  most  of  it 
mere  drivel.  Sonnet  126,  which  is  a  canzon- 
ette,  and  complete  in  itself,  completes  this 
series.  Sonnet  107,  by  the  way,  is  supposed 
98 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

to  congratulate  Southampton  upon  his  re- 
lease from  prison,  which,  if  correct,  would 
lead  to  the  conclusion  that  Southampton  was 
the  friend  addressed,  Southampton  the 
patron  to  whom  the  Venus  and  the  Lucrece 
were  dedicated;  and  would  also  fix  the  date 
of  composition  of  this  Sonnet,  since  South- 
ampton's release  from  the  Tower  occurred 
on  April  10,  1603. 

Sonnets  127-152  are  ostensibly  ad- 
dressed to  a  woman,  but  are  so  extremely  un- 
flattering that  one  may  be  excused  for  doubt- 
ing that  they  were  addressed  to  any  real  per- 
son. The  lady  is  described  as  unattractive 
and  with  a  bad  breath;  she  is  "black  as  hell," 
and  so  are  her  deeds.  Their  love  is  unlawful, 
and  she  is  his  "worser  spirit."  Sonnet  145, 
included  in  this  series,  is  considered  to  be  by 
another  hand. 

Sonnets  153-4  are  an  original  transla- 
tion of  a  Greek  epigram,  to  the  effect  that 
Love's  torch  having  gone  out  while  he  slept, 
it  was  relighted  by  the  eyes  of  the  poet's  mis- 
tress. 

99 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

A  biographical  character  is  universally 
assigned  to  these  sonnets,  although  a  great 
deal  that  is  in  them  is  evidently  mere  affecta- 
tion, such  as  prevailed  in  the  sonneteering 
period. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  author 
of  the  Venus  and  of  the  Lucrece  is  also  the 
author  of  the  Sonnets. 

Take  the  following  lines  from  the  Venus, 
where  the  goddess  is  endeavoring  to  argue 
Adonis  into  reciprocating  her  passion; 

163.     Torches  are  made  to  light,  jewels  to 

wear, 
Dainties  to  taste,  fresh  beauties  for 

the  use, 
Herbs  for  their  smell  and  sappy  plants 

to  bear. 
Things  growing  to  themselves  are 

growths  abuse; 
Seeds  spring  from  seed  and  beauty 

breedeth  beauty, 
Thou  wast  begot — to  get  it  is  thy  duty. 

169.     Upon     the     earth's     increase     why 
shouldst  thou  feed, 

100 


THE    SILENT    SHARES? 


Unless  the  earth  ititik  thy  iridrease 

be  fed? 
By  law  of  Nature  thou  art  bound  to 

breed, 
That  thine  may  live  when  thou  thy- 

self are  dead; 
And  so  in  spite  of  death  thou  dost  sur- 

vive 
In  that  thy  likeness  still  is  left  alive. 

751.     Therefore  despite  of  fruitless  chastity, 
Love  lacking  vestals,  and  self  lov- 

ing nuns, 
That   on   the   earth   would   breed   a 

scarcity 
And  barren  dearth  of  daughters  and 

of  sons, 
Be  prodigal,  the  lamp  that  burns  by 

night 

Dries  up  his  oil  to  lend  the  world  his 
light. 

757.     What  is  thy  body  but  a  swallowing 

grave 

Seeming  to  bury  that  posterity 
Which  by  the   rights   of  time  thou 
needst  must  have 
101 


:T*HE  'S'lL'ENT  SHAKESPEARE 

• '  •  If  thdu  'destroy  them  not  in  dark 
obscurity 

If  so  the  world  will  hold  thee  in  dis- 
dain 

Sith  in  thy  pride  so  fair  a  hope  is 
slain. 

and  compare  with  the  first  seventeen  Sonnets, 
from  which  the  following  are  a  few  of  the 
lines ; 

3.     But  if  thou  live,  remembered  not  to  be 
Die  single,  and  thine  image  dies  with 

thee. 

13.  Dear  my  love,  you  know 

You  had  a  father ;  let  your  son  say  so. 

15.     When  I  perceive  that  men  as  plants 

increase 
Cheered  and  check'd  even  by  the 

self  same  sky 
Vaunt  in  their  youthful  sap,  at  height 

decrease 

And  wear  their  brave  state  out  of 
memory; 

We  may  question  whether  this  line  of 
argument  was  likely  to  influence  the  youth- 
102 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

ful  Adonis,  but  we  may  not  question  the 
conclusion  that  the  author  of  the  Venus  and 
the  author  of  the  Sonnets,  were  one. 

Sir  Sidney  Lee  sees  in  Southampton  the 
friend  to  whom  the  Sonnets  are  addressed, 
and  thinks  that  several  of  the  Sonnets  em- 
body language  almost  identical  with  that  in 
the  dedication  to  Lucrece;  or  in  other  words, 
that  they  were  written  by  the  author  of  the 
Lucrece.  See,  for  example,  Sonnet  26. 

Yet,  despite  the  supposed  intimacy  be- 
tween Southampton  ;and  Will  Shakspere; 
despite  the  real  intimacy  which  must  have 
existed  between  the  author  of  the  Sonnets 
and  their  inspirer,  there  is  no  mention  of 
Shakspere  in  Southampton's  existing  letters 
or  papers. 

That  the  real  authorship  is  concealed  un- 
der an  assumed  name  is  proclaimed  in  Son- 
nets 72  and  76. 

"My  name  be  buried  where  my  body  is 
And  live  no  more  to  shame  nor  me 
nor  you. 

103 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Why  write  I  still  all  one,  ever  the 

same 

And  keep  invention  in  a  noted  weed 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  my 

name." 

"Invention"  meaning  his  compositions, 
and  "weed"  a  garment  or  cloak,  as  the  word 
is  used  in  Sonnet  2.  The  meaning  still  sur- 
vives in  our  phrase,  widow's  weeds ! 

So,  when  we  read  of  "Shakespeare's 
sugred  Sonnets"  we  understand  that  Shakes- 
peare is  a  pseudonym,  made  noted  by  the 
success  of  Venus  and  of  Lucrece. 

The  passionate  love  for  young  men  ex- 
pressed in  the  Sonnets  accords  very  well  with 
Bacon's  character,  for  like  his  master,  James 
I,  By  the  Grace  of  God  King  of  England, 
&c.,  he  has  been  charged  with  the  vice  of  an 
erotic  fancy  for  young  men.  And  both 
Southampton  and  Pembroke  were  notori- 
ously licentious. 

The  "rival  poet"  of  Sonnets  80-86  has 
been  plausibly  identified  with  George  Chap- 
man, and  the  "proud  full  sail  of  his  great 
104 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

verse."  Chapman  is  known  to  have  sought 
Southampton's  patronage  in  1596-7  for  his 
translation  of  the  Iliad. 

A  rather  showy  identification  has  been 
conceived  by  Judge  Stotsenburg  of  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  as  the  author  of  the  Sonnets;  of 
Lady  Penelope  Rich,  for  whom  Sidney  had 
a  fancy,  as  the  Dark  Lady;  and  of  Sir  Ed- 
ward Dyer,  Sidney's  friend,  as  the  friend  of 
the  Sonnets.  But  it  is  based  upon  a  misap- 
prehension of  the  line  in  Sonnet  20; 

"A  man  in  hue,  all  hues  in  his  con- 
trolling." 

Naturally,  a  dyer  has  all  hues  in  his 
controlling,  but  hue,  formerly  spelled  hew, 
and  from  the  anglo  saxon  hiw,  means  form, 
not  color,  and  is  so  used  elsewhere  in  the 
Sonnets.  Thus  in  Sonnet  82; 

"As  fair  in  knowledge  as  in  hue." 
And  in  Sonnet  104; 

"So  your  sweet  hew,  which  methinks 

still  doth  stand 
Hath  motion." 

In  these  instances  the  sense  requires  the 
105 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

meaning,  form  or  shape,  and  in  Sonnet  20 
the  meaning  is ; 

"A  man  in  form,  all  forms  in  his  con- 
trolling." 

Referring  undoubtedly  to  the  possible  re- 
sults of  the  procreative  activities  so  highly 
recommended  by  our  poet. 

In  Sonnet  76  the  author  conceives  that 
he  is  making  plain  both  his  own  name  and 
the  name  of  the  friend  to  whom  he  writes; 

"every  word  doth  almost  tell  my 

name 

Showing  their  birth  and  where  they 
did  proceed." 

Unfortunately,  we  no  longer  understand 
the  allusions,  and  the  birth  as  well  as  the 
destination  of  the  lines  is  still  disputed. 

The  punning  Sonnets,  135,  136,  143,  do 
not  assist  us.  The  author  says  that  the 
Dark  Lady  has  her  will,  for  his  name  is 
Will;  William  Shakespeare,  his  pseudonym. 

During  the  years  in  which  the  Sonnets 
were  written,  our  actor  was  pursuing  his 
lucrative  but  humble  calling;  touring  the 
106 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

provinces  with  his  fellow  apes,  puppets,  jug- 
glers and  clowns;  was  trying,  with  others  of 
his  kind,  to  enter  the  ranks  of  gentility,  and 
was  being  ridiculed  for  it;  was  just  one  of 
carpenter  Burbage's  men  players;  was  suing 
Philip  Rogers  of  Stratford  for  two  shillings; 
and  was  tricking  his  fellow  Burbage  out  of 
his  mistress'  favors,  or  seducing  an  inn 
keeper's  wife  at  Oxford. 

If  Will  Shakspere  had  indeed  been 
Southampton's  intimate,  as  we  are  asked 
to  believe  by  those  who  believe  that  he  wrote 
the  Sonnets,  would  not  his  personal  history 
have  been  written  in  larger  letters? 

The  series  of  probabilities  above  set 
forth  may  now  be  summarized  as  follows; 

1.  Venus,  Lucrece  and  the  Sonnets  are 
from  the  same  hand. 

2.  That   hand   was   not   Will    Shaks- 
pere's, 

a.  Because  there  are  no  known 
facts  in  his  life  to  support 
the  belief,  and  the  facts  we 
have  are  inconsistent  with 
it. 
107 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

b.  Because  his  patron  was  Lord 

Strange,  not  the  Earl  of 
Southampton. 

c.  Because    his    name    was    not 

Shakespeare,  but  a  name 
vocally  and  etymologically 
different. 

d.  Because  the  name  Shakespeare, 

prefixed  to  the  Sonnets,  was 
avowedly  a  pen  name,  a 
noted  weed.  It  was  noted, 
because  the  success  of  Lu- 
crece  had  made  it  so.  It 
was  not  Shakspere's,  be- 
cause it  was  too  like  his  real 
name  to  serve  as  a  disguise. 

e.  Because  he  was  never  contem- 

poraneously identified  with 
the  author  of  the  poems. 

3.  Known  poets,  that  is  professional 
poets,  would  have  used  their  own 
names. 

4.  We  know  that  Bacon  had  written  a 
Sonnet  before  1604,  and  that  he  was 

108 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

known  as  a  poet  by  his  contem- 
poraries before  1610,  although  the 
only  surviving  acknowledged  verses 
of  his  were  written  in  1624. 

5.  Bacon  had  a  sufficiently  good  reason 
at  the  moment  for  concealing  his 
identity  as  the  author. 

6.  The  amorous  character  of  the  poems 
answers  to  the  known  disposition  of 
both  Bacon  and  of  Southampton. 

For  those  who  accept  these  conclusions, 
Shakspere's  fancied  friendships  with  the 
great  ones  of  the  earth  must  vanish  into  noth- 
ingness, for  there  is  absolutely  no  evidence 
in  support  of  them  except  the  name  William 
Shakespeare  attached  to  the  Venus,  the  Lu- 
crece  and  the  Sonnets. 


109 


CHAPTER  IV 
The  First  Folio 

If  Ben  Jonson  had  written  nothing  con- 
cerning Shakspere  but  the  Ode  to  his  Be- 
loved, which  is  among  the  prefatory  matter 
to  the  folio  of  1623,  we  should  either  have 
to  accept  the  distinct  identification  there 
made  of  the  actor  with  the  author,  or  we 
should  have  to  flatly  decline  to  do  so,  because 
of  the  inherent  improbability  of  Jonson's 
eulogies. 

Happily,  Honest  Ben  has  spared  us  the 
unpleasant  necessity  of  choosing  which  horn 
of  the  dilemma  we  prefer,  by  recording,  or 
having  recorded  for  him,  upon  at  least  half 
a  dozen  occasions,  when  he  was  not  under 
contract  to  write  a  paean  of  praise,  his  opin- 
ion of  Will  Shakspere.  These  extra  folian 
pronouncements  are  mutually  consistent,  but 
are  all  at  variance  with  the  Ode;  the  weight 
and  purport  of  which  is  thereby  greatly  mod- 
ified. 

110 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  folio  came  into  existence  in  the  fol- 
lowing way: 

By  1623  the  little  circle  of  the  Burbage 
players  had  lost  some  of  its  principal  mem- 
bers. Richard  Burbage,  its  star,  died  in 
1618;  William  Kemp,  the  clown,  had  left  it 
in  1602,  and  is  not  heard  of  after  1605,  and 
Augustine  Phillips  died  in  1605. 

John  Fletcher  had  succeeded  the  older 
writers  as  the  lion  of  the  dramatic  authors. 
He  collaborated  with  Field,  Massinger,  Row- 
ley and  others,  and  was  the  dramatist  for  the 
King's  players.  The  Shakespeare  plays  were 
no  longer  new,  and  were  given  but  infre- 
quently; and  their  owners,  who  were  also  the 
owners  of  the  theatre,  to  wit;  the  Burbage 
heirs,  Heminge,  and  Condell,  saw  a  possible 
profit  in  collecting  and  publishing  them  from 
their  own  copies  in  order  to  displace  the 
pirated  editions  then  in  the  market. 

The  charges  of  publishing  were  borne 
by  Wm.  Jaggard,  Ed.  Blount,  J.  Smithweeke 
and  W.  Aspley. 

The  ever-needy  Ben  Jonson  was  engaged 
111 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

to  give  the  book  a  literary  send-off.  He  was 
a  most  suitable  person  for  the  purpose,  hav- 
ing published  his  own  works  in  1616,  the 
first  writer  to  undertake  such  an  enterprise. 
Besides  this,  he  was  the  foremost  literary 
man  in  England;  and  the  poet  laureate,  hav- 
ing been  so  created  by  Letters  Patent  dated 
February  1,  1616,  with  a  pension  of  100 
marks  a  year,  later  increased  by  Charles  I 
to  100  pounds. 

The  poems  were  not  included  in  the  folio, 
which  contained  but  36  plays,  Pericles  being 
omitted. 

Some  of  the  plays  are  more  complete  than 
in  the  quartos;  some  are  less  complete;  they 
were  evidently  published  without  editing. 

Twenty  of  them  were  here  published  for 
the  first  time. 

About  two  hundred  copies  of  the  first 
folio  are  now  in  existence,  of  which  it  is  said 
that  less  than  twenty  copies  contain  the  por- 
trait printed,  and  not  inserted,  on  the  title 
page. 

112 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  verses  which  introduce  the  portrait 
are  signed  "B.  I.,"  or  Ben  Jonson,  and  are 
written  in  a  style  which  obituary  poetry  has 
rendered  familiar  to  us  all; 

TO  THE  READER 

"This  figure,  that  thou  here  seest  put, 
It  was  for  gentle  Shakespeare  cut; 
Wherein  the  Graver  had  a  strife 
With  Nature,  to  outdoo  the  life. 
O,  could  he  but  have  drawne  his  wit 
As  well  in  brasse  as  he  hath  hit 
His  face;  the  print  would  then  sur- 

passe 

All,  that  was  ever  writt  in  brasse. 
But  since  he  cannot,  Reader,  looke 
Not  on  his  Picture,  but  his  Booke." 

The  lines  asserting  that  the  Graver  had 
a  strife  with  Nature  to  outdoo  the  life  are 
not  original,  but  are  to  be  found  in  other 
eulogies  of  the  time.  It  is  all  dreadfully  poor 
stuff. 

The  book  is  dedicated  to  Pembroke  and 
Montgomery,  the  "Incomparable  Paire  of 
113 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Brethren,  who  have  prosequuted  both  these 
trifles  and  their  Author  living  with  so  much 
favour";  that  is  to  say,  who  have  attended 
and  approved  the  performances,  for  there  is 
no  evidence  that  they  ever  did  more. 

Heminge  and  Condell,  who  signed  the 
Dedication,  are  made  to  say  that  they  have 
collected  the  plays  and  done  an  office  to  the 
dead,  who  is  "by  death  departed  from  that 
right  .  .  .  without  ambition  of  selfe 
profit  or  fame." 

Nevertheless,  in  the  Address  to  the  Great 
Variety  of  Readers,  which  follows,  and 
which  also  is  signed  by  Heminge  and  Con- 
dell,  the  public  is  urged  to  buy  the  book; 
"But,  whatever  you  do,  Buy."  The  public 
is  informed  that  it  was  before  "abused  with 
diverse  stolne  and  surreptitious  copies,"  but 
that  these  are  now  offered  "cured  and  per- 
fect of  their  limbs,  and  all  the  rest,  absolute 
in  their  numbers,  as  he  conceived  them 
.  .  .  His  mind  and  hand  went  together, 
and  what  he  thought,  he  uttered  with  that 
114 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

easiness  that  we  have  scarse  received  from 
him  a  blot  in  his  papers." 

These  two  addresses  are  universally  at- 
tributed to  Jonson,  who,  in  his  "Discoveries," 
referring  to  the  claim  that  Shakespeare  never 
blotted  a  line,  sardonically  remarks  that  his 
friends  chose  that  circumstance  to  commend 
their  friend  wherein  he  most  faulted. 

Next  we  have  some  lines  by  Hugh  Hol- 
land, beginning; 

"Those  hands  which  you  so  clapt,  go 

now,  and  wring 

You  Britaines  brave;   for  done  are 
Shakespeare's  dayes:" 

and  a  Catalogue  of  the  Plays,  numbering 
only  35,  for  Troilus  and  Cressida,  although 
contained  in  the  folio,  was  omitted  in  cata- 
loguing; and  Pericles  is  not  included  in  the 
book. 

And  so  at  last  we  come  to  Jonson's  verses 

to  the  Author.   It  must  be  confessed  that  the 

Plays  were  sufficiently  prefaced,  although  it 

would  have  been  well  had  the  editors  thought 

115 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

it  worth  while  to  give  us  some  account  of  the 
life  and  personality  of  the  author,  and  fewer 
fireworks. 

To  the  Memory  of  my  Beloved 

the  Author 
Mr.  William  Shakespeare 

and 
what  he  hath  left  us. 

Now  it  must  be  insisted  upon  that  Will 
Shakspere  was  not  Jonson's  Beloved.  On  the 
contrary,  Jonson  lost  no  opportunity  of  at- 
tacking our  actor  in  his  most  vigorous  man- 
ner. Thus; 

In  "Every  Man  out  of  his  Humor,"  1599, 
he  pillories  Shakspere  as  Sogliardo,  a  well-to- 
do  clown,  with  an  ambition  to  become  a  gen- 
tleman, at  any  cost.  Sogliardo  purchases 
arms;  "By  this  parchment,  gentlemen,  I 
have  been  so  toiled  among  the  harrots  yon- 
der you  will  not  believe  ...  I  can 
write  myself  gentleman  now;  here's  my 
Patent;  it  cost  me  thirty  pound  ...  it 
is  your  boar  without  a  head,  rampant." 
116 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

And  the  jester  Carlo,  who  is  tutoring  the 
clown,  strikes  in; 

Carlo — A  swine  without  a  head ;  without 
braine,  wit,  anything  indeed,  ramping  to  gen- 
tility. 

Puntavarlo — Let  the  word  be  'Not  with- 
out mustard,7  your  crest  is  very  rare,  sir. 

Shakspere's  motto,  it  will  be  remembered, 
for  this  passage  has  been  quoted  in  a  former 
chapter,  was  'Non  sanz  droict.' 

In  the  "Poetaster,"  again,  in  1601,  where 
Jonson  presents  himself  as  Horace,  attacked 
by  two  scribblers,  Crispinus  and  Demetrious, 
under  which  names  he  satirizes  Marston  and 
Dekker,  he  introduces  a  braggart  captain, 
one  Tucca,  who  asks  Histrio,  an  actor,  if  he 
knows  Pantalabus;  one  who  takes  all,  a 
plagiarist; 

"a  gent'man  parcel  poet;  his  father 
was  a  man  of  worship,  I  tell  thee — 
he  pens  high,  lofty,  in  a  new  talking 
strain,  bigger  than  half  the  rhymers 
in  town." 

117 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

This  also  conceeded  to  be  a  drive  at 
Shakspere  as  a  thief  of  plays. 

Jonson  has  been  accused  of  ingratitude 
in  thus  attacking  Shakspere,  and  there  is  a 
story  to  the  effect  that,  when  a  little  known 
author,  he  wanted  the  Burbages  to  produce 
"Every  Man  in  his  Humor"  in  1598,  the  play 
was  about  to  be  rejected,  when  the  gentle 
Shakespeare  intervened,  and  succeeded  in 
having  the  piece  accepted. 

Unfortunately  for  the  truth  of  the  only 
anecdote  which  presents  Shakspere  to  us  as 
the  doer  of  a^kind  or  generous  action,  "Every 
Man  in  his  Humor"  was  played  by  Hen- 
slowe's  company  before  this  date;  having 
been  first  presented  on  November  25,  1596, 
and  a  number  of  times  subsequently,  with 
great  success.  Neither  the  poet  nor  the  play 
was  unknown  in  1598. 

The  first  twelve  lines  of  the  Ode  form  a 
labored  apology; 

"To  draw  no  envy  (Shakespeare)  on 

thy  name, 

Am  I  thus  ample  to  thy  Booke,  and 
Fame; 

118 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

While  I  confesse  thy  writings  to  be 

such 
As  neither  Man,  nor  Muse,  can  praise 

too  much, 
Tis  true,  and  all  men's  suffrage.  Bui 

these  wayes 
Were  not  the  paths  I  meant  unto  thy 

praise : 
For  seeliest  Ignorance  on  these  may 

light, 
Which,  when  it  sounds  at  best,  but 

ecchos  right; 
Or  blinde  Affection,  which  doth  ne're 

advance 
The  truth,  but  gropes,  and  urgeth  all 

by  chance; 
Or  crafty  Malice,  might  pretend  this 

praise, 
And  thinke  to  ruine,  where  it  seem'd 

to  raise." 

Surely  this  is  a  remarkable  introduction 
to  an  eulogistic  poem.  It  is  not  unnatural 
nor  unusual  to  praise  an  author  in  a  prefa- 
tory notice  to  his  works,  and  it  does  not 
necessarily  call  down  ridicule  or  malice  to  do 
119 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

so.  Why,  then,  did  Jonson  hedge  in  this 
way,  as  if  to  protect  himself  against  antici- 
pated assaults  upon  his  position? 

Why  should  Malice  think  he  meant  to 
ruin  Shakspere  by  overpraise,  unless  indeed, 
there  was  some  reason  for  the  charge.  He 
owns  himself  that  he  is  praising  him 
abundantly.  And,  above  all,  what  way  was 
it  'he  meant  unto  his  praise'  ? 

The  Ode  continues; 

"I,  therefore,  will  begin,  Soule  of  the 

Age! 
The  applause !  delight !  the  wonder  of 

our  Stage! 
My   Shakespeare,   rise;    I   will   not 

lodge  thee  by 

Chaucer,  or  Spencer,  or  bid  Beau- 
mont lye 

A  little  further,  to  make  thee  a  roome; 
Thou   are   a  Moniment,   without   a 

tombe, 
And  art  alive  still,  while  thy  Booke 

doth  live, 
And  we  have  wits  to  read,  and  praise 

to  give." 
120 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Note  the  exclamation  points  in  the  first 
two  lines  above.  The  statements  were  not 
true  at  the  time;  Shakespeare  was  vieux  jeu 
for  the  moment,  and  Fletcher  was  reigning 
on  the  stage. 

The  fourth  and  fifth  lines  allude  to  a 
Sonnet  to  Mr  William  Shakespeare  which 
had  recently  been  put  forth  by  William 
Basse,  in  which  it  is  said; 

"Renowned    Spencer,    lye   a   thought 

more  nye 

To  learned  Chaucer,  and  rare  Beau- 
mont lye 

A  little  nearer  Spenser,  to  make  roome 
For  Shakespeare  in  your  threefold, 
fourfold  tombe," 

But  Jonson  will  have  none  of  that;  com- 
pare the  above  lines  with  the  epigram  to  the 
Poet  Ape,  already  quoted ; 

"Poor  Poet  Ape,  that  would  be  thought 

our  chief, 

Whose  works  are  e'en  the  frippery 
of  wit; 
121 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

From  brokage,  is  become  so  bold  a 

thief 

As  we,  the  robbed,  leave  rage,  and 
pity  it. 

He  takes  up  all,  makes  each  man's  wit 
his  own, 

And,  told  of  this,  slights  it.  Tut,  such 

crumes 

The  sluggish,  gaping  auditor  de- 
vours ; 

He  marks  not  whose  'twas  first;  and 

after  times 

May  judge  it  to  be  his,  as  well  as 
ours." 

Skipping  a  little  in  the  Ode,  we  come  upon 
this; 

"And  though  thou  hadst  small  Latine, 

and  lesse  Greeke 
From  thence  to  honour  thee,  I  would 

not  seeke 
For  names;  but  call  forth  thundering 

AEschilus 

Euripides,  and  Sophocles  to  us, 
Paccuuius,  Accius,  him  of  Cordova 
dead, 

122 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

To  life  again,  to  hear  thy  buskin 

tread, 
And   shake  a   stage;    or,   when  thy 

socks  were  on, 

Leave  thee  alone,  for  the  comparison 
Of    all,    that    insolent    Greece,    or 

haughtie  Rome 
Sent  forth,  or  since  did  from  their 

ashes  come." 

Commenting  on  this,  we  note  that  Rowe 
relates  that  in  conversation  with  Suckling, 
Davenant,  Porter,  and  Hales  of  Eton,  Jon- 
son  insisted  on  Shakespeare's  want  of  learn- 
ing, until  Hales  had  to  stop  him. 

Shakspere  may  have  had  small  learning, 
but  Jonson  thought  well  of  his  acting,  for 
he  wanted  to  call  up  AEschilus  and  the  other 
ancient  worthies  to  hear  his  buskin  tread 
and  shake  the  stage. 

The  line  about  'insolent  Greece  and 
haughtie  Rome'  occurs  also,  as  every  one 
knows,  in  Jonson's  "Discoveries,"  which  was 
written  about  1630,  but  not  published  until 
1641,  four  years  after  Jonson's  death.  Under 
123 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

the  head  of  Scriptorum  Catalogus,  they  are 
applied  to  Bacon,  who  is  said  to  be  he  'who 
hath  filled  up  all  numbers  and  performed 
that  in  our  tongue  which  may  be  compared 
or  preferred  either  to  insolent  Greece  or 
Haughty  Rome/ 

After   another   interval,    the    Ode   con- 
tinues ; 

"Yet  must  I  not  give  Nature  all;  thy 

Art, 
My  gentle  Shakespeare,  must  enjoy 

a  part. 
For  though  the  Poets  matter,  Nature 

be, 
His  Art  doth  give  the  fashion.   And 

that  he 
Who  casts  to  write  a  living  line,  must 

sweat, 

(Such  as  thine  are)  and  strike  the 

second  heat 

Upon  the  Muses  anvil :  turn  the  same, 
(And  himself  with  it)  that  he  thinkes 

to  frame; 
Or  for  the  lawrell,  he  may  gaine  a 

scorne, 

124 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

For  the  good  Poet's  made,  as  well  as 

borne. 
And  such  wert  thou.  Looke  how  the 

fathers  face 
Lives  in  his  issue,  even  so,  the  race 

Of  Shakespeares  minde,  and  man- 
ners brightly  shines 

In  his  well  torned  and  true  filed  lines : 

In  each  of  which,  he  seems  to  shake 
a  lance 

As  brandisht  at  the  eyes  of  Ignorance. 

Sweet  Swan  of  Avon !  what  a  sight  it 

were 
To  see  thee  in  our  waters  yet  ap- 

peare,  &c. 

It  is  a  pity  to  cavil  at  these  fine  lines; 
but  what  must  we  think  of  them  when  we 
find  Jonson  telling  Drummond  of  Haw- 
thorndon  in  1619,  that  Shakespeare  "wanted 
arte,"  and  of  that  passage  in  his  "Discov- 
eries," De  Shakespeare  Nostrati,  where  he 
says  of  Shakespeare  that  he  most  faulted  in 
that  "he  never  blotted  out  a  line." 

"He  was  indeed  honest  and  of  a 
free  open  nature,  had  an  excellent 
125 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

fancy,  brave  notions  and  gentle  ex- 
pressions, wherein  he  flowed  with  that 
facility  that  sometimes  it  was  neces- 
sary he  should  be  stopped.  'Suf- 
flaminandus  erat  (he  needed  to  be 
shut  up),  as  Augustus  said  of 
Haterius.  His  wit  was  in  his  own 
power:  would  the  rule  of  it  had  been 
so  too.  Many  times  he  fell  into  those 
things  could  not  escape  laughter 
.  .  .  But  he  ever  redeemed  his 
vices  with  his  virtues.  There  was  ever 
more  in  him  to  be  praised  than  to  be 
pardoned." 

Such  was  the  modest  estimation  in  which 
Jonson  held  Will  Shakspere,  and  when  he 
adds  "I  loved  the  man,  and  do  honour  his 
memory  on  this  side  idolatry  as  much  as 
any,"  we  may  be  assured  that  the  honor  he 
gave  him  was  very  considerably  this  side  of 
idolatry.  When  he  was  not  paid  to  be  adula- 
tory, Jonson  describes  Will  Shakspere  as 
Sogliardo,  the  well  to  do  clown;  as  Panta- 
labus,  the  man  who  takes  all;  or  as  the  Poet 
126 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Ape,  that  bold  thief;  as  the  man  who  wanted 
arte,  as  he  told  Drummond;  who  wanted 
learning,  as  he  told  Hales  and  the  rest;  as 
the  actor  who  sometimes  made  himself  ridicu- 
lous on  the  stage;  the  man  whose  tongue  and 
pen  flowed  so  freely  that  he  needed  to  be  shut 
up ;  and  finally  that  wonder  of  the  stage  who 
had  more  in  him  to  be  praised  than  to  be 
pardoned. 

What  then  are  the  lines  of  the  Ode  but 
pardonable  poetical  exaggeration?  It  is  no 
crime  to  exaggerate  a  little  upon  such  an  oc- 
casion. Nearly  every  advertiser  to  sell  his 
wares,  does  as  much.  The  whole  introductory 
matter  is  of  a  like  character ;  the  verses  to  the 
portrait;  the  statement  that  the  collection  was 
made  without  ambition  of  profit,  followed  by 
the  exhortation  to  buy;  and  the  statement  that 
the  plays  are  absolute  in  their  numbers  as  he 
conceived  them,  and  the  like. 

Jonson  was  not  a  man  of  so  high  minded 
a  moral  character  as  to  be  above  the  suspi- 
cion of  such  offenses  as  we  are  attributing 
to  him.    When  in  prison  in  1598  for  having 
127 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

killed  Gabriel  Spencer  in  a  duel,  he  turned 
Roman  Catholic,  not  from  conviction,  but  as 
he  said  himself,  "taking  the  priests  word  for 
it;"  and  later  wrote  a  letter  to  Lord  Salisbury 
which  showed  that  he  was  willing  to  spy 
upon,  and  inform  against  his  fellow 
Catholics. 

And  in  1619  he  told  Drummond  a  very 
unedifying  story  about  himself.  In  1613,  it 
appears,  he  was  in  France,  acting  as  gov- 
ernor to  the  son  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  who 
exhibited  him,  dead  drunk  upon  a  car, 
"which  he  made  to  be  drawn  by  pioneers 
through  the  streets,  at  every  corner  showing 
his  governor  stretched  out,  and  telling  them 
that  was  a  more  lively  image  of  a  crucifix 
than  any  they  had."  Evidently  the  youth 
felt  but  little  respect  for  his  tutor. 

Returning  to  the  folio;  the  Ode  is  fol- 
lowed by  two  tributes,  one  by  Leonard 
Digges,  in  which  occurs  the  line  which  in- 
forms us  the  monument  at  Stratford  was 
already  in  existence; 

"And  time  dissolves  thy  Strat- 
ford Moniment," 
128 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  finally  a  list  of  the  principal  actors  in 
all  these  plays,  containing  twenty-six  names. 

Of  the  sixteen  plays  which  had  appeared 
in  print  before  1623,  some  are  more  com- 
plete in  the  folio  than  in  the  quartos,  and 
these,  we  infer,  were  printed  in  the  folio  as 
written,  and  not  as  acted ;  for  the  acting  ver- 
sions were  frequently  curtailed.  Mr.  Edwin 
Reed  has  compiled  the  results  of  the  com- 
parison of  eleven  of  the  plays.  For  example; 

Henry  VI  contains  1139  lines,  and 
2,000  changes  not  in  the  1619  quarto. 

Merry  Wives  is  nearly  double  the  length 
of,  and  quite  different  from  the  1619  quarto. 

Taming  of  the  Shrew  contains  1,000 
lines  more  than  the  1607  quarto. 

Henry  V  has  the  choruses,  two  scenes, 
and  1655  lines  not  in  the  1608  quarto. 

On  the  other  hand,  Hamlet  is  shorter  in 
the  folio  than  in  the  1694  quarto,  and  some 
of  the  finest  passages  are  omitted,  doubtless 
for  representation  on  the  stage. 

Some  of  the  plays  are  divided  into  Acts 
and  Scenes ;  some  into  Acts  without  any  divi- 
129 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

sion  into  scenes.  Hamlet,  with  surprising 
carelessness,  has  no  divisions  after  Act  II, 
Scene  2. 

In  Richard  III,  twelve  printer's  errors 
are  reproduced  from  the  1622  quarto. 

Troilus  is  not  even  catalogued,  nor  is  it 
paged  except  for  the  first  few  pages. 

In  some  of  the  plays  the  names  of  the 
actors  who  played  the  parts  are  given  instead 
of  their  part  names.  Thus  we  learn  that 
Kempe  played  Dogberry,  and  Cowley 
Verges,  in  Much  Ado  About  Nothing;  that 
Harvey  played  Bardolph,  and  Rossill  Peto 
in  1  Henry  IV.  S inkier,  Bates,  Court, 
Williams  and  others,  in  all  about  twenty  five 
names  of  actors,  it  is  said,  are  made  known 
to  us  in  their  parts  through  these  oversights. 

What  then  becomes  of  the  theories  of 
careful  editing,  and  of  the  assertion  of 
Heminge  and  Condell  that  instead  of  the 
stolen,  surreptitious  copies  with  which  the 
public  was  formerly  abused,  these  are  now 
offered  cured  and  perfect  of  their  limbs? 

On  the  contrary,  it  appears  that  Heminge 
130 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  Condell  collected  the  plays,  and  brought 
them  to  the  publishers  direct  from  the 
theatre,  and  that  they  were  printed  from  those 
copies  without  correction. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  inquire  as  to  how 
Heminge  and  Condell  obtained  possession 
of  the  plays,  and  to  whom  they  belonged ;  for 
they  certainly  did  not  belong  to  Will  Shaks- 
pere's  estate.  Did  they  belong  to  the  theatre 
owners,  or  to  the  company  of  actors?  Either 
was  possible;  plays  were  owned  in  either 
way;  Henslowe  the  theatre  owner,  counted 
his  stock  of  plays  on  March  3  1598,  and  had 
25  plays.  We  may  therefore  inquire  as  to 
the  ownership  of  the  Globe  and  Blackfriars 
theatres,  with  which  Heminge  and  Condell 
were  connected. 

The  Globe  Theatre  was  originally  built 
in  1599,  and  finished  in  July  of  that  year; 
was  burned  down  on  June  29  1613,  and  was 
rebuilt  in  the  following  year. 

The  Burbages,  Richard  and   Cuthbert, 
had  a  half  interest  in  it.    The  other  half  was 
divided  into  eight  shares,  held  by  Shakspere, 
131 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Heminge,  Phillips,  Pope,  and  Kempe,  later 
Condell  was  added,  and  later  still,  Ostler 
and  Field. 

These  interests  could  be  devised;  Pope 
died  1603-4,  willing  his  interest;  Shakspere 
had  evidently  disposed  of  his  interest  upon 
leaving  London,  and  by  1627  we  find  the 
owners  reduced  to  four,  Heminge  and 
Condell  having  bought  in  the  other  actors' 
shares.  Cuthbert  Burbage,  Mrs.  Robinson, 
who  was  Richard  Burbage's  widow; 
Heminge,  and  Condell,  each  owned  four 
shares. 

As  to  the  Blackfriars  Theatre,  it  was 
completed  by  the  end  of  1596,  and  was  then 
leased  to  Thos.  Evans  for  the  Children  of 
the  Chapel,  or  as  they  were  subsequently 
called,  of  the  Queens  Revels.  In  August 
1608,  the  Burbages  took  over  the  lease,  and 
placed  their  own  men  in  the  theatre,  and 
joined  them  partners  in  the  profits  of  the 
house.  The  ownership  seems  to  have  been 
at  that  time,  in  eight  shares,  held  by  the  two 
Burbages,  Shakspere,  Heminge,  Condell  and 
Ostler. 

132 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

In  1634  the  owners  were  Cuthbert 
Burbage,  Mrs.  Robinson,  Jno  Shank,  Mrs 
Condell,  Jos  Taylor,  Jno  Lowin  and  Jno 
Underwood,  eight  shares  in  all;  Shank  hold- 
ing two  shares. 

In  April  1612,  according  to  Collier, 
Edward  Alleyn  paid,  with  the  incorrigible 
English  liking  for  odd  sums,  599  pds  6  sh 
8  d,  for  an  interest  in  the  Blackfriars  theatre, 
possibly  for  Shakspere's  share.  Alleyn  died 
Nov  25  1626,  and  his  interest  must  have 
passed  back  to  the  actors  in  the  Kings  com- 
pany before  1634. 

As  a  matter  of  collateral  interest,  it  was 
testified  by  Thomasin  Ostler  in  1616,  that 
the  theatre  shares,  having  then  twenty  one 
years  to  run,  were  worth,  for  the  whole  issue, 
4,200  pounds  for  the  Globe,  and  2,100 
pounds  for  the  Blackfriars  theatre. 

At  no  time  therefore,  did  Heminge  and 
Condell  own  either  of  the  theatres  entirely, 
and  if  the  plays  had  belonged  to  the  owners, 
or  housekeepers,  as  they  were  called,  we 
should  expect  to  find  their  names  joined  with 
133 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Heminge  and  Condell  in  the  introductory 
matter  to  the  folio.   But  they  are  not  there. 

Turning  to  the  actor's  companies,  we 
find  that  they  also  owned  plays.  Henslowe 
made  a  number  of  entries  of  money  lent  to 
the  Lord  Admiral's  men  for  the  purchase  of 
plays  from  the  writers ;  as  for  instance ; 

March  30  1598.  Lent  unto  the 
Company  to  give  Mr.  Willsone, 
Dickers,  Drayton  and  Cheatall,  in 
parte  payment  of  a  booke  called 
Pierce  of  Exstone  (Richard  II)  the 
some  of  40  sh. 

There  are  a  number  of  similar  entries. 

Of  the  eight  actors  of  the  Kings  com- 
pany, who  together  with  Shakspere,  were 
named  in  James  license  of  May  17  1603,  and 
who  paraded  with  him  on  March  15  1604, 
on  the  occasion  of  the  King's  entry  into 
London,  for  their  four  and  a  half  yards  of 
red  cloth  apiece;  only  Heminge  and  Condell 
were  left  by  1623.  Richard  Burbage  died 
March  13  1618,  Augustine  Phillips  on  May 
4  1605,  and  William  Slye  on  August  13 
134 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

1608.     Fletcher,  Armin  and  Cowley  appear 
to  have  left  the  company  before  1623. 

It  is  a  reasonable  conclusion  that  the 
plays,  the  last  of  which,  Henry  VIII, 
appeared  in  1612,  belonged  to  the  actors. 
Heminge  was  Treasurer  of  the  company,  and 
the  plays  were  probably  in  his  possession. 
He  and  Condell  were  retiring  from  the 
stage,  and  as  literary  executors  and  residuary 
legatees  of  the  old  company,  gathered  to- 
gether the  old  plays  and  looked  for  a  pub- 
lisher, in  order  to  realize  upon  this  asset. 
Troilus  was  found  at  the  last  moment,  and 
added  after  the  catalogue  was  printed; 
Pericles  was  overlooked  altogether. 

But  the  plays  were  no  longer  as  popular 
as  formerly,  and  it  was  not  easy  to  find  a 
publisher  willing  to  undertake  the  enterprise. 
In  the  lists  of  Court  performances  given  in 
the  years  1613  and  1623  inclusive,  we  find 
only  three  representations  of  Shakespeare 
plays  named.  But  finally  four  publishers 
agreed  to  share  the  risk  of  the  undertaking, 
and  the  work  was  issued.  From  these  doubts 
135 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

and  difficulties  sprang  the  need  of  the  elab- 
orate puffing  of  the  prefatory  matter,  and  the 
numerous  typographical  errors  with  which 
the  book  is  disfigured. 

But,  even  if  Jonson's  testimony  to  the 
great  value  of  Will  Shakspere's  contribution 
to  the  plays  be  discredited,  as  it  would  be  in 
any  modern  court  of  justice,  yet  we  must  be- 
lieve that  he  had  some  share  in  them.  Not 
only  Jonson,  in  references  made  elsewhere  to 
Shakspere's  work;  but  Greene,  and  Davies, 
tell  us  that  he  did  some  work  on  the  plays; 
and  they  all  agree  as  to  what  that  work  was ; 
he  fixed  up  old  plays,  and  popularised  them 
by  adding  comic  scenes;  nothing  more.  He 
was  not  a  great  man,  nor  a  great  author,  but 
he  did  what  was  in  him  to  do. 

And  so,  while  Ben  Jonson,  the  literary 
man,  left  a  good  library,  Will  Shakspere — 
actor  and  comic,  left  none. 


136 


CHAPTER  V 
Multiple  Authorship. 

To  the  casual  reader,  the  plays  of  Shake- 
speare appear  to  be  nearly  uniform  in  excel- 
lence of  style  and  of  thought ;  to  him  Shake- 
speare is  always  Shakespeare. 

That  this  is  not  the  case  is  well  known 
to  students  of  the  plays.  It  has  been  well 
said  that  Shakespeare  is  a  noise  of  many 
waters,  and  the  only  debatable  questions  con- 
cern the  proper  apportionment  of  the  work 
of  the  different  writers  who  have  contributed 
to  the  works. 

Nor  is  the  quality  of  the  plays  any  more 
uniform  than  their  style.  Critics  divided 
them  into  three  or  four  classes,  according  to 
their  merit;  and  there  is  as  wide  a  difference 
between  Macbeth  and  Titus  Andronicus,  for 
example,  as  between  Midsummer  Nights 
Dream  and  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  or  be- 
tween Hamlet  and  Pericles  as  there  is  between 
137 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

the  work  of  a  master  and  that  of  a  tyro,  some 
of  the  inferior  plays  being  very  poor  stuff 
indeed. 

How  these  differences  of  style  and  of 
quality  arose  I  shall  endeavor  to  suggest; 
always  for  the  benefit  of  the  casual  reader; 
by  a  brief  reference  to  the  dramatic  methods 
of  the  time.  And  first,  the  practise  of  collab- 
oration demands  our  attention. 

For  it  is  well  known  that  in  Shakespeare's 
day,  theatre  managers  often  engaged  several 
authors  to  write  upon  a  play,  in  order  to 
expedite  the  work.  During  the  two  years 
during  which  the  company  of  players  to 
which  Will  Shakspere  belonged,  occupied 
Henslowes'  theatre;  that  is  from  June  1594 
to  July  1596,  a  new  play  was  given,  on  an 
average,  every  eighteen  days.  To  keep  up 
this  rate  of  production,  it  was  necessary  that 
plays  should  be  turned  out  with  expedition, 
and  this  was  accomplished  by  engaging  a 
number  of  writers,  sometimes  as  many  as  six, 
in  the  composition  of  a  play. 

We  find,  in  the  memoranda  left  by 
138 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 


Henslowe,  the  names  of  about  a  dozen 
writers,  some  of  them  very  well  known,  whom 
he  employed  in  the  work  of  writing,  revis- 
ing, or  adding  to  plays  to  be  used  in  his 
theatres.  As  for  example: 


Henry  Chettle 


Thomas  Dekker 


Michael  Drayton 


Originally,  it  is  be- 
lieved, a  printer. 
He  was  engaged 
upon  forty  nine 
plays,  of  which 
only  thirteen  were 
wholly  his. 
Who  collaborated 
in  fifty  two  plays, 
with  nearly  every 
author  of  the  day. 
Like  Will  Shak- 
pere,  a  Warwick- 
shire man,  a  fact 
to  be  noted  by 
those  who  seek  to 
prove  Shakspere's 
authorship  by  cit- 
ing local  refer- 


139 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 


William   Haughton 


Ben  Jonson 


ences  occurring  in 
the  plays.  Dray- 
ton  was  an  actor,  a 
poet,  and  a  drama- 
tist. He  wrote 
about  twenty  plays 
which  were  very 
popular. 

Who  wrote  one 
very  successful 
play  alone,  and 
collaborated  with 
'.Chettle,  Dekker 
and  Day. 
Also  wrote  for 
Henslowe.  His 
father  was  a  min- 
ister. He  spent 
some  time  at  Cam- 
bridge; he  was  a 
soldier,  an  actor,  a 
dramatist,  and  the 
second  of  Eng- 
land's Poet  Lau- 
reates. 


140 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 


Thomas  Middleton 


Anthony  Monday 


John  Webster 


Robert  Wilson 


A  man  of  good 
family ;  a  Cam- 
bridge graduate, 
and  of  Greys  Inn. 
His  play  "The 
Chan  geling"  is 
hardly  equalled, 
outside  of  Shake- 
speare. 

An  actor,  and  a 
traveler  in  Italy 
and  in  France.  He 
collaborated  with 
Drayton,  Wilson, 
and  Hathway. 
A  writer  of  the 
first  rank.  His 
"White  Devil"  is 
a  tragedy  not  much 
less  remarkable 
than  Shake- 
speare's. 

Of  whom  not  much 
is    known,    except 


141 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

that  he  was 
praised  by  Meres 
as  being  "for 
learning  and  wit, 
without  company 
or  compere." 

Robert  Greene  A  Cambridge  man, 

who  studied  medi- 
cine, traveled  in 
Spain  and  Italy, 
and  wrote  about  a 
dozen  plays. 

These,  with  Thomas  Kyd,  John  Day, 
and  Richard  Hathway,  constituted  Hens- 
lowes  staff  of  writers ;  that  is,  the  staff  of  one 
theatre  manager. 

Some  of  the  greatest  names  of  the  age 
remain  to  be  mentioned;  Beaumont,  Chap- 
man, Fletcher,  Ford,  Heywood,  Lodge,  Mar- 
lowe, Marston,  Massinger,  Nash  and  Peele. 
Some  one  has  counted  the  names  of  forty 
noteworthy,  and  two  hundred  and  twenty 
three  minor  writers  in  the  Elizabethan  era, 
some  of  them  not  far  inferior  to  Shakespeare; 
142 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

more  particularly  Beaumont,  Marlowe, 
Webster  and  Drayton. 

Such  were  the  dramatists  of  the  period, 
of  that  glorious  period  when  the  new  world 
was  really  new  to  Europe,  and  when  Eng- 
land was  laying  the  foundations  of  its  future 
greatness.  It  formed  a  galaxy  of  talent  well 
able  to  supply  all  that  the  plays  contain  of 
law,  of  medicine,  of  seamanship  or  classical 
knowledge,  of  familiarity  with  foreign 
countries;  of  everything  in  short,  that  Will 
Shakspere  could  not  supply. 

Nearly  all  of  them  wrote  in  collaboration 
with  others,  and  to  many  of  them  a  share  has 
been  ascribed  in  the  composition  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays. 

Between  1591  and  1601  Henslowe  paid 
for  or  produced  a  number  of  plays  with  iden- 
tical, or  at  least  similar  titles  with  some  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays. 

And  between  June  1594  and  July  1596 
the  Lord  Chamberlain's  men,  of  whom  Will 
Shakspere  was  one,  played  at  his  theatres. 
143 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

During  this  period  the  following  plays  with 
Shakespearian  titles  were  produced; 

March  3  1592     Henry  VI,  a  new  play 

May  14     "        Harey  V 

Jany  23  1593      Titus  Ondronicus,  new 

April  8  1594       Kinge  Leare 

June  9       "         Hamlet 

"  11  "  Tamynge  of  a  Shrowe 
From  a  large  number  of  similar  entries, 
the  following  memoranda  of  payments  made 
by  Henslowe  for  the  writing  of  plays  are 
selected.  Henslowe  had  his  own  ideas  as  to 
spelling. 

"Lent  unto  Thomas  Downton,  to  lende 
unto  Mr  Dickers  and  harey  Cheat- 
ell,  in  earneste  of  ther  boocke 
called  Troyeles  and  Creasse  daye, 
Aprell  7  1599  3  pds. 

"Lent  unto  Samwell  Rowlye  1601  to 
pay  unto  harye  Chettell  for  writ- 
tinge  the  boocke  of  Carnalle  Wols- 
eye  lyfe,  the  5  of  June      20  sh 
"Lent  unto  Robarte  Shawe  to  lend  unto 
harey  Chettell  and  Antonye  Mon- 
144 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

daye  and  mihell  Drayton  in  earn- 
este  of  a  boocke  called  the  Rissenge 
of  Carnowlle  Wolsey,  the  10  of 
Oct  1601  40  sh 

"Lent  unto  harey  Chettell  by  the  com- 
pany at  the  Eagell  and  the  childe 
in  pt  of  payment  of  a  boocke 
called  the  Rissynge  of  carnell 
Wollsey  the  some  of  the  6  of  Nov 
1601  10  sh 

"Lent  unto  the  companye  the  22  of 
May  1602  to  geve  unto  Antoney 
Monday  and  Mihell  Drayton, 
Webster,  Mydelton  and  the  rest,  in 
earnest  of  a  boocke  called  sesers 
Falle  5  pds." 

Henslowe  did  not  buy  any  plays  from 
Will  Shakspere  nor  from  Shakespeare,  nor 
did  he  mention  his  name  in  any  way. 

Furthermore,  none  of  these  plays  for 
which  he  paid,  are  contained  in  a  list  of  his 
stock  of  plays  which  he  made  out,  dated 
March  3  1598. 

The  actual  fact  of  the  practise  of  collab- 
145 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

oration  being  thus  established,  we  may  con- 
sider its  application  to  the  Shakespeare 
plays.  And  first,  as  to  the  richness  of  the 
Shakespeare  vocabulary. 

Max  Muller,  quoting  from  Kenan's  "His- 
toire  des  Langues,"  said  that  while  an  edu- 
cated man  rarely  uses  over  three  or  four 
thousand  words,  the  plays  contain  a  vocabu- 
lary of  15,000  words.  Prof.  March  makes 
the  same  estimate,  while  Prof.  Craik  and 
others  place  it  at  21,000  words.  Milton, 
with  8,000  words,  is  a  bad  second. 

Bartlett's  Complete  Shakespeare  Concord- 
ance contains  1,910  pages,  averaging  about 
8.5  words  per  page,  excluding  inflections;  a 
total  of  over  16,000  words. 

The  authorised  version  of  the  Bible  is 
said  to  contain  15,000  words  in  its  vocabu- 
lary, an  estimate  which  anyone  can  investi- 
gate by  consulting  a  Bible  Concordance. 
The  Bible,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  com- 
posed of  sixty  six  different  books  originally 
written  in  three  different  languages,  and  the 
translation  of  our  authorised  version  was 
146 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

executed  by  forty  eight  different  scholars. 
The  substantial  harmony  of  style  in  the 
Bible,  notwithstanding  the  manner  in  which 
it  was  produced,  is  greater  than  that  in  the 
Shakespeare  works. 

The  question  of  the  unity  of  authorship 
of  the  Shakespeare  plays  is  thus  definitely 
settled  in  the  negative.  No  one  man  has  ever 
been  master  of  such  an  enormous  vocabulary. 

If  we  consider  the  history  of  the  plays, 
and  the  views  of  the  critics  as  to  their  author- 
ship, we  shall  reach  the  same  conclusion. 
For  a  rapid  survey  of  the  matter  we  may 
arrange  plays  in  three  divisions;  old  plays 
which  have  been  retouched;  other  collabora- 
ted plays;  and  plays  which  have  been  at- 
tributed to  different  authors. 

Old  plays  retouched. 

Titus  Andronicus.     A  fourth  rate  play  of 

1584-90,  published  in 

1594,  1600,  and  1611  anonymously.    It  was 

played  at  Henslowe's  on  Jany.  23  1593  as  a 

new  play.    Jonson  refers  to  it  in  the  intro- 

147 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

duction  to  Bartholomew  Fair,  1614,  as  then 
25  or  30  years  old.  The  folio  play  contains 
one  scene  which  is  not  in  the  1611  quarto. 
Malone  pronounced  it  to  be  not  Shake- 
speare's ;  Dowden  calls  it  pre-Shakespearian, 
and  Swinburne  says  that  no  scholar  believes 
in  the  single  authorship  of  Titus,  and  thinks 
that  it  contains  some  of  Greene's  work. 
Other  critics  have  thought  that  Kyd,  Dek- 
ker  and  Chettle  had  a  share  in  it. 

1  Henry  VI  A  fourth  rate  play  of  1589- 
91,  which  was  published  in 
1600  as  by  Shakespeare.  It  was  acted  at 
Henslowe's  on  March  3,  1591  as  new.  Nash 
identifies  it  in  1592  by  a  mention  of  Talbot, 
who  appears  in  this  first  play  of  the  trilogy 
only.  Dowden  calls  it  pre-Shakespearian. 
None  of  the  three  plays  are  by  Shakespeare, 
says  Malone.  A  trilogy  of  old  plays  re- 
touched, says  Brandes.  Only  touched  up  by 
Shakespeare,  says  Masson.  The  old 
Henslowe  play  altered,  says  Marshall.  It  is 
attributed  by  others  to  Greene,  Peele  and 
Kyd. 

148 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

2  Henry  VI     Composed  1591-2,  published 

in  1594  as  the  "First  part  of 
the  Contention  of  the  two  famous  Houses  of 
York  and  Lancaster,"  containing  2214  lines. 
The  present  play  is  a  rehash;  the  2d  and  3d 
parts  contain  3250  lines  of  the  old  plays  says 
Boas.  The  authorship  is  disputed,  says 
Masson.  Probably  in  part  by  Marlowe,  say 
Dyce  and  Dowden  . 

3  Henry  VI     A  fourth  rate  play  of  1591-2. 

It  was  published  in  1595 
as  "The  True  Tragedy  of  Richard 
Duke  of  York,"  in  2311  lines.  This  is  the 
play  that  Greene  referred  to  in  his  Groats- 
worth,  parodying  the  line  "O  tygre's  heart, 
wrapt  in  a  woman's  hide."  Dowden  calls 
these  three  plays  pre-Shakespearian,  and  at- 
tributes them  in  part  to  Marlowe;  so  also 
Swinburne.  Malone  does  not  think  any  of 
the  three  Shakespeare's.  Meres  in  1598  did 
not  include  Henry  VI  in  his  list  of  Shake- 
speare's plays.  By  some  writers  they  are 
attributed  to  the  joint  labor  of  Greene,  Peele 
and  Kyd. 

149 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

King  John  Composed  between  1591-95. 
It  was  published  anonymously 
in  1591  as  "The  Troublesome  Reign  of 
King  John."  A  dull  old  play,  says  Swin- 
burne. In  1611  it  was  published  as  Shake- 
speare's. The  folio  is  based  on  the  early 
play,  but  has  about  1,000  new  lines.  Bran- 
des  says  that  with  fine  passages  it  combines 
intolerable  affections.  The  writer  is  un- 
known. 

Richard  III  Composed  about  1593,  and 
published  anonymously  in 
1597.  On  June  24,  1602  Henslowe  paid 
Ben  Jonson  10  pds.  on  account  for  writing 
of  "Richard  Crookbacke,"  a  play  on  the 
reign  of  Richard  III.  Dowden  says  that  the 
two  Richard  plays  show  Marlowe's  hand, 
and  T.  W.  White  attributes  Richard  III  to 
Marlowe. 

Richard  II     Composed    about    1594    and 

published     anonymously     in 

1597  as  "The  Tragedy  of  King  Richard  the 

second,  as  it  hath  been  publicly  acted  by  the 

150 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Lord  Chamberlain  his  servants,"  and  in 
1608  with  Shakespeare's  name  on  the  title 
page,  "with  new  additions  of  the  Parliament 
scene  and  the  deposing  of  King  Richard." 
In  March  1598  Wilson,  Dekker,  Drayton 
and  Chettle  were  writing  "Pierce  of  Exstone" 
for  Henslowe.  Richard  II  was  the  play 
given  on  February  2  1601,  just  before  the 
Essex  rebellion,  and  the  play  which  then  dis- 
pleased the  Queen.  Yet  three  weeks  later  we 
know  that  Will  Shakspere  was  playing  be- 
fore the  Queen,  and  therefore,  that  he  was 
not  suspected  of  being  its  author.  Mr.  T.  W. 
White  attributes  it  to  Daniel  or  Drayton. 

Romeo  and  Juliet  Composed  between 
1591-6,  and  published 
anonymously  in  1597.  Dowden  calls  it  a 
revision  of  an  old  play.  The  "Return  from 
Parnassus,"  of  1599,  not  the  one  played  in 
1601,  contains  this,  says  T.  W.  White; 

"Ingenioso  speaking;  Mark  Romeo  and 

Juliet;  O  monstrous  theft;  I  think  he  will 

run    through    a    whole    book    of    Samuel 

Daniel."  And  Mr.  T.  W.  White  ascribes  it 

151 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

to  Daniel.     Furnivall  (Jates  its  composition 
in  1591,  and  the  nurse's  words;  Act  I,  3. 

"Tis  since  the  earthquake  (April  6  1580) 
now  eleven  years"  confirm  Furnivall's 
opinion.  In  London,  after  the  Restoration, 
it  was  presented  on  alternate  nights,  as  a 
comedy  and  as  a  tragedy.  The  orginal  of 
the  play  was  a  Spanish  comedy  by  Lopez  de 
Vega. 

Taming  of  the  Shrew     A  fourth  rate  play 

of  1589-97.  It  was 

published  anonymously  in  1594,  with  which 
edition  the  folio  agrees,  having  meanwhile 
grown  longer  by  some  1,000  lines.  On  June 
11  1594  it  was  played  at  Henslowe's.  In 
1602  Henslowe  paid  Dekker  for  writing 
"Medicine  for  a  curst  wife,"  and  Dekker's 
hand  may  be  traced  in  the  present  play. 
T.  W.  White  attributes  it  to  Daniel  or  Dray- 
ton.  Collier  and  Swinburne  to  Haughton, 
and  Fleay  to  Kyd,  revised  by  Lodge  and 
Shakespeare.  Masson  acknowledges  that  its 
authorship  is  disputed. 
152 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

1  Henry  IV  A  first  rate  play  of  1597-8 
and  published  anonymously 
in  1598.  This  quarto  is  quite  perfect,  al- 
though Shakespeare  is  not  named  on  the 
title  page,  nor  in  the  registry.  In  the  first 
edition  Falstaff  was  called  Sir  John  Old- 
castle,  which  was  the  name  of  a  play  written 
for  Henslowe  in  1599  by  Monday,  Drayton, 
Wilson  and  Hathway,  and  published  the  fol- 
lowing year  under  Shakespeare's  name. 
T.  W.  White  attributes  it  to  Nash. 

Henry  V  Composed  about  1598-9,  and 
published  anonymously  in  1598 
as  "The  Famous  Victories  of  Henry  the 
Fifth."  The  original  was  a  very  old  play, 
for  Tarleton,  who  died  in  1588,  acted  in  it. 
It  was  played  on  May  14  1592  at  Hens- 
lowe's,  and  is  mentioned  by  Nash  in  the 
same  year.  It  has  been  attributed  in  part  to 
Marlowe,  and  also  to  Drayton  and  Dekker. 

Julius  Caesar     A  first  rate  play  of  1599- 
1604,  published  first  in  the 
folio.    In  1598,  as  is  noted  by  Stotsenburg, 
153 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Drayton  published  "Mortomeriados,"  con- 
taining a  parallel  passage  to  one  in  Julius 
Caesar,  V.  5.  On  May  22  1602,  Monday, 
Drayton,  Webster,  Middleton,  "and  the 
rest,"  were  writing  "Caesars  Fall"  for  Hens- 
lowe. 

Hamlet  A  first  rate  play  of  1602,  published 
in  1603  under  Shakespeare's  name. 
An  old  and  a  very  much  revised  play.  In 
1591  Nash  quoted  the  "to  be  or  not  to  be"  as 
known  for  five  years,  or  as  early  as  1586. 
On  June  9  1594  it  was  played  at  Henslowe's. 
This  early  play  was  probably  by  Kyd,  says 
Sir  Sidney  Lee.  Mr.  Pemberton  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  in  the  "Brudermord,"  a 
German  version  of  the  lost  Hamlet, 
Polonius  is  called  Corambio,  which  name  is 
given  to  him  in  the  quarto  of  1603,  thus 
showing  that  the  present  play  is  derived 
from  the  early  play. 

Troilus  and  Cressida     Composed    between 

1601-8     and    pub- 
lished   anonymously   in    1609    and    as   by 
154 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Shake-speare.  In  April  1599  Dekker  and 
Chettle  were  writing  Troilus  and  Cressida 
for  Henslowe.  Marston  is  thought  to  refer 
to  this  play  in  his  "Histrio  Matrix"  c  1598. 
It  was  registered  on  February  7  1603  by 
Master  Roberts.  The  prefatory  Address  is 
curious.  The  title  page  of  the  1609  edition 
stated  that  it  was  "as  acted  by  the  Kings 
company  at  the  Globe,"  but  part  of  the 
edition  has  a  different  title.  Now  the  pre- 
fatory address  is,  in  part,  as  follows : ; 

"A  Never  writer  to  an  Ever 
Reader;  News.  Eternal  Reader,  you 
have  here  a  new  play,  never  clapper 
clawed  with  the  palms  of  the  vulgar 
by  the  grand  posses- 
sor's Wills,  I  believe  you  should  have 
prayed  for  them  (the  comedies) 
rather  than  been  prayed  &c." 

There  was  evidently  some  trouble  about 
the  copyright  to  the  play,  which  should  have 
been  owned  by  Henslowe,  since  he  paid  for 
it  in  1599.  It  would  appear  that  it  was 
inserted  in  the  folio  at  the  last  moment,  since 
155 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

it  is  omitted  from  the  catalogue  and  is  not 
even  paged.  The  Irving  Shakespeare  attrib- 
utes the  last  act  to  Dekker,  and  Brandes  pro- 
nounces the  play  to  be  decadent  and  of  innate 
barbarism. 

Othello  A  first  rate  play  of  1604-6,  which 
was  first  published  in  1622.  In 
February  1599  Dekker,  Haughton  and  Day 
were  writing  "The  Spanish  Moor's  Tragedy" 
for  Henslowe.  The  original  was  undoubt- 
edly a  Spanish  play.  The  scene  is  not  Vene- 
tian, for  there  is  no  mention  of  canals;  the 
people  walk  the  streets  as  in  other  towns; 
they  do  not  ride  in  gondolas.  It  was  besides, 
impossible  that  a  Moor  should  command  a 
Venetian  army.  These  considerations  show, 
as  T.  W.  White  has  pointed  out,  its  adapta- 
tion from  another  play. 

King  Lear     Composed  about  1605-6,  and 
published      anonymously      in 
1605.    An  early  play  was  registered  on  May 
14  1594,  and  was  acted  at  Henslowe's  on 
April  8  1594.     Some  of  the  finest  passages 
in  the  quarto  vare  omitted  in  the  folio. 
156 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Thus  it  appears  by  consent,  in  most  in- 
stances, of  confessed  Stratfordians,  that  of 
the  37.  Shakespeare  plays,  sixteen  are  old 
plays  retouched,  and  therefore,  containing 
the  work  of  several  writers. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  the  whole  story; 
a  number  of  the  other  plays  are  believed  to 
be  the  product  of  collaboration. 

Other  Collaborated  Plays. 

Two  Gentleman  of  Verona    Composed 

about      1590- 

92,  and  first  published  in  the  folio.  In 
January  1585,  Felix  and  Philiomena,  these 
being  the  names  of  the  principals  in  "Diana 
in  Love,"  a  translated  Spanish  romance,  was 
played  before  the  Queen  at  Greenwich.  In 
1598  Meres  attributed  the  same  story  to 
Shakespeare.  T.  W.  White  quotes  Upton 
and  Henmer  as  saying  that  the  Two  Gentle- 
men is  by  some  inferior  hand,  and  Stotsen- 
burg  thinks  it  the  work  of  Dekker  and  Dray- 
ton. 

157 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Midsummer  Nights  Dream     Dates   from 

1590-97,   and 

was  published  in  1600.  Its  authorship  is 
attributed  to  Peele  and  Drayton  by  T.  W. 
White. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor     Composed  about 

1598-1602    and 
published  in  1602. 

It  was  perhaps  adapted  from  the 
"Jealous  Comedy/'  of  1592.  The  quarto  is 
a  mere  outline  of  the  folio.  Interpolated  by 
a  botcher,  says  Halliwell-Phillipps.  It  is 
a  play  of  no  literary  merit,  and  its  composi- 
tion has  been  ascribed  to  Dekker  and  Dray- 
ton. 

Alls  Well  that  ends  Well     In  its  present 

form    dates 

from  1597-1602,  but  is  supposed  to  be  re- 
ferred to  by  Meres  in  1598  under  the  title  of 
Love's  Labor's  Won.  The  plot  is  taken  from 
Boccaccio's  Decameron;  only  the  comic 
parts,  says  Brandes,  being  of  Shakespeare's 
invention.  Swinburne  assigns  to  it  a  second 
158 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

place  among  the  Shakespeare  plays,  and 
Stotsenburg  sees  in  it  signs  of  more  than  one 
author. 

Measure  for  Measure     Composed  in  1603-4 

but    first    published 

in  the  folio.  It  was  founded,  says  Castle,  on 
Promos  and  Cassandra,  a  comedy  by  George 
Whetstone  of  1578.  In  1602  Heywood  and 
Chettle  wrote  a  play  for  Henslowe  called 
"Like  quits  Like,"  an  expression  found  in 
Act  V.  6.  of  Measure  for  Measure. 

Macbeth  A  first  rate  play  of  1606,  pub- 
lished in  1610.  Portions  of  it 
are  Middleton's,  says  Swinburne.  One  of 
the  most  striking  scenes  is  by  a  hack,  says 
Lee.  T.  W.  White  thinks  it  is  by  Chapman. 
Certain  confusions  in  the  plot  indicate  the 
participation  of  more  than  one  writer. 

Timon  of  Athens     Dates  from  1607-10,  and 

first    published    in    the 

folio.     Only  in  part  by  Shakespeare,  says 

Dowden.     No  scholar   questions  the  part 

159 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

taken  by  some  hireling  in  Timon,  say  Swin- 
burne and  Lee. 

Pericles  A  fourth  rate  play  of  1607-8, 
although  Masson  and  others  say 
that  it  may  be  as  early  as  1588.  Dryden 
called  it  Shakespeare's  first  play.  It  was 
published  in  1609,  and  is  not  in  the  folio  of 
1623.  Malone  did  not  consider  it  to  be 
Shakespeare's,  and  Masson  suggests  Greene 
as  author.  Says  Jonson; 

"Like  Pericles,  and  stale 

As  the  shrieve's  crusts,  and  nasty  as 

his  fish 
Scraps  out  of  every  dish." 

Only  partly  Shakespeare's,  says  Dowden. 
More  than  one  author,  says  Swinburne.  It 
was  registered  February  7  1603,  but  condi- 
tionally, not  to  be  printed  until  permission 
was  had  from  the  owners. 

Cymbeline     About    1609-10   but  not  pub- 
lished until  1623.    The  vision 
of  Posthumus  is  mummery  by  another  hand, 
says  Lee. 

160 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

A  Winters  Tale  Dates  from  1610-11  but 
first  published  in  1623. 
It  is  attributed  by  T.  W.  White  to  Greene 
and  Nash.  Andrew  Lang  notes  that  Delphi 
is  mentioned  as  Delphos,  a  place  that  has  no 
existence,  and  that  it  is  confused  with  Delos, 
thus  locating  the  oracle  on  an  island. 

Henry  VIII  Composed  in  1612  and  first 
published  in  1623.  In  1601 
Chettle  was  writing  "Cardinal  Wolsey's 
Life,"  and  Chettle,  Monday  and  Drayton 
were  writing  the  "Rising  of  Cardinal  Wol- 
sey"  for  Henslowe.  The  present  play  is 
partly  by  Fletcher,  says  Lee.  It  is  by  Fletcher 
and  Massinger,  say  Poel  and  Dowden. 

Adding  these  eleven  plays  to  the  sixteen 
old  plays  retouched,  we  have  a  total  of 
twenty  seven  plays  out  of  thirty  seven 
Shakespeare  plays  which  are  considered  by 
competent  critics,  to  contain  the  work  of 
more  than  one  author. 

Some  of  the  remaining  plays  have  been 
attributed,  by  one  writer  or  another,  for  more 
161 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

or  less  substantial  reasons,  to  other  authors 
than  Shakespeare.  As  follows ; 

Love's   Labor   Lost     A   play   of    1585-91, 

which  was  published 

in  1598.  An  entirely  orginal  play;  but  the 
quarto  states  on  the  title  page  "Newly  cor- 
rected and  augmented  by  W.  Shakspere," 
which  does  not  of  necessity  imply  that  he  was 
its  author.  In  fact,  the  early  date  of  its 
composition,  which  is  fixed  by  internal  evi- 
dence, such  as  references  to  the  French  wars 
of  the  eighties,  almost  certainly  exclude  the 
possibility  of  Shakspere's  authorship. 
Brandes  pronounces  it  to  be  by  the  author 
of  the  Sonnets.  Reed  gives  it  to  Bacon,  and 
T.  W.  White  to  Greene. 

Comedy  of  Errors     Composed    between 
1587-91   but  not  pub- 
lished   until    1623.  A    vulgar    parody    of 
Plautus'  "Menaechmi,"  probably  by  Greene, 
says  T.  W.  White.       A  reference  to  the 
Spanish  Armada  as  a  recent  event  would 
appear  to  fix  the  date  of  its  composition  at 
162 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

about  1588.  Stotsenburg  assigns  it  to  Dek- 
ker  or  Porter.  In  any  event,  if  it  dates  from 
1588,  it  could  not  have  been  written  by 
Shakspere. 

Merchant  of  Venice     A   first  rate  play  of 

1594-6,  published  in 

1598.  Inspired  by  Marlowe's  "Jew  of 
Malta,"  but  from  a  Spanish  original;  the 
names  are  Spanish.  T.  W.  White  assigns  it 
to  Peele. 

2  Henry  IV  Composed  about  1597-8  and 
published  •  anonymously  in 
1600.  Its  composition  antedates  that  of  the 
first  part,  since  in  this  quarto  of  1600  Fal- 
staff  is  called  Oldcastle,  while  the  1598 
quarto  of  the  first  part  has  already  the 
change  from  Oldcastle  to  Falstaff.  Both 
plays  are  attributed  by  T.  W.  White  to  Nash. 

As  You  Like  It     1599-1600,  and  published 

in  1608.       The  story  is 

taken  from  Lodge's  "Rosalynde,"  of  1590, 

and  T.  W.  White  assigns  the  play  to  Lodge. 

163 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Antony  and  Cleopatra     A  first  rate  play  of 

1606,  published  in 
1608,  and 

Coriolanus     1608-9,  first  published  in  1623, 
are  both  assigned  by  T.  W. 
White  to  Bacon. 

Tempest  1610-11,  not  published  until 
1623,  is  attributed  by  T.  W. 
White  to  Chapman. 

These  eight  plays  bring  the  total  num- 
ber so  far  described,  up  to  thirty  five,  leav- 
ing only  two;  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  and 
Twelfth  Night,  concerning  the  authorship 
of  which  I  have  met  with  no  conjecture. 
T.  W.  White  dismisses  them  with  the  re- 
mark; "authorship  unknown." 

The  foregoing  review,  brief  and  super- 
ficial as  it  is,  ought  to  sufficiently  exhibit 
upon  what  an  insecure  foundation  rest  both 
the  popular  idea  of  the  unity  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  and  that  other  wild  theory  that 
Will  Shakspere,  of  Stratford,  was  the  great 
author. 

164 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

We  may  rest  assured  that  many  of  the 
plays  are  revisions  of  older  plays,  and  that 
many  others  were  composed  at  a  date  so 
early  that  it  precludes  the  possibility  of  the 
Will  Shakspere  authorship.  So  evident  is 
this,  that  inveterate  Stratfordians  have  been 
obliged  to  suppose  that  our  Will  wrote  some 
of  the  plays  while  yet  in  Stratford.  We  need 
not  trouble  ourselves  to  combat  this  theory. 

By  the  proved  fact  of  collaboration  then, 
we  readily  account  for  the  knowledge  of  the 
classics,  of  law,  medicine,  seamanship, 
court  life,  foreign  countries  and  all  the  rest, 
which  has  so  tried  the  souls  of  the  commen- 
tators. 

By  some  means  the  name  Shake-speare ; 
please  note  not  Shaks-pere,  Shags-pere,  nor 
Shax-per;  acquired  a  commercial  value,  and 
the  popular  name  was  affixed  to  a  variety  of 
plays,  just  as  stories  or  jests  are  fathered 
upon  some  noted  raconteur  of  our  own  day; 
and  it  has  remained,  and  will  doubtless  con- 
tinue there.  But  it  is  only  a  name — nothing 
more. 

165 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Jonson  and  Beaumont  retained  the  pro- 
prietorship of  their  plays,  notwithstanding 
the  performance  of  them  at  the  Globe  by  the 
King's  players.  But  no  claimant  has  ever 
appeared  for  the  authorship  of  the  "  Shake- 
speare" plays,  except  a  name.  It  has  there- 
fore been  said  the  "greatest  of  all  our  Eng- 
lish poets  is  but  a  name." 

Is  is  in  fact,  hardly  too  extravagant  a 
conjecture  to  suppose,  from  the  absence  of 
unity  of  style  in  these  plays,  and  from  the 
way  in  which  they  were  tossed  into  the  folio, 
that  they  were  neither  more  nor  less  than  a 
part  of  the  old  stock  of  plays,  and  that 
Heminge  and  Condell  owned  them. 


166 


CHAPTER  VI 

"Our  English  Terence" 

Voltaire  found  Shakespeare  at  once  "an 
amazing  genius,"  and  "an  indecent  buffoon." 
"It  appears,"  said  he,  in  the  prefatory  matter 
to  his  drama  of  Semiramis,  "that  Nature 
pleased  herself  in  assembling  in  the  head  of 
Shakespeare  the  highest  degree  of  force  and 
greatness,  together  with  all  that  was  most 
coarse,  dull,  low  and  detestable."  S.  G. 
Tallentyre,  in  her  delightful  life  of  Voltaire, 
explains  this  anomaly,  which  so  perplexed 
Voltaire,  by  remarking  that  he  did  not  know, 
as  we  do,  "that  many  of  the  clowns,  and  the 
clownish  jokes  to  which  he  took  a  just  objec- 
tion, were  interpolations  and  not  Shakespeare 
himself." 

Both  of  these  clever  authors  are  in  the 
right,  but  the  world  is  still  debating  the 
question  of  who  was  the  genius,  and  who  the 
the  clown. 

167 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

It  is  evident  that  Will  Shakspere  was 
known  among  his  contemporaries  for  a 
writer  of  a  sort;  as  early  as  1592  Greene 
sneered  at  him  as  an  upstart  crow  who  fan- 
cied that  he  could  bombast  out  a  blank  verse 
as  well  as  the  best  of  us ;  Davies  called  him  a 
comic  writer,  "Our  English  Terence";  and 
Jonson  said  that  he  was  a  bold  thief  who 
bought  the  reversion  of  old  plays,  and  made 
each  man's  wit  his  own. 

More  than  this,  when  Jonson  published 
his  Sejanus,  after  it  had  been  acted  at  the 
Globe  theatre  in  1603,  with  Shakspere  in  the 
cast,  he  stated  in  the  preface  that  "it  was  not 
the  same  with  that  which  was  acted  on  the 
public  stage  ...  a  second  pen  had  a 
good  share  in  it  ...  not  to  defraud  so 
happy  a  genius  of  his  right"  he  has  replaced 
his  own  words  in  the  play.  It  is  not  unrea- 
sonable to  infer  that  the  interpolater  in  this 
case,  at  whom  this  caustic  shaft  was  aimed, 
was  none  other  than  Will  Shakspere. 

Drayton,  in  an  elegy  to  Henry  Reynolds, 
said  "Shakespeare,  thou  hadst  as  smooth  a 
168 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

comic  vein,  Fitting  the  sock,  and  in  thy  nat- 
ural brain  &c."  And  in  our  own  day  George 
Brandes,  best  of  Stratfordians,  wrote  of  All's 
Well  that  ends  Well,  that .  only  the  comic 
parts  were  of  Shakespeare's  invention. 

The  author  of  the  Merchant  of  Venice, 
whoever  he  was,  made  of  Shylock,  and  with- 
out doubt,  intended  to  make  of  him  a 
pathetic  and  tragic  character.  But  the  Shak- 
spere  troupe  gave  the  part  to  a  buffoon.  And 
Halliwell-Phillips  has  unearthed  a  tradition 
to  the  effect  that  Shakspere  inserted  some 
comic  business  for  lago,  and  gave  the  part 
to  a  popular  comedian. 

Given  his  character  and  reputation  as 
we  see  them,  it  is  a  justifiable  assumption 
that  the  perpetrator  of  these  literary  out- 
rages was  Will  Shakspere  himself;  and  we 
may  deduce  from  their  occurrence,  that  since 
no  author  would  permit  such  changes  in  the 
interpretation  of  his  work,  Will  Shakspere 
was  not  the  author  of  these  plays. 

In  adopting  this  theory  we  do  not 
acknowledge  that  there  is  occasion  to  sup- 
169 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

pose  that  a  conspiracy  was  in  existence  to 
deceive  the  world  as  to  the  authorship  of  the 
plays;  or  for  supposing  that,  in  the  case  of 
any  great  number  of  them,  some  great  per- 
sonage was  concealing  his  identity  under  an 
assumed  name.  The  facts  are  that  a  large 
number  of  the  plays  were  old;  the  work  of 
writers  whose  names  were  known  to  those 
who  were  in  the  business  of  writing  or  of 
producing  plays,  and  that  they  had  been 
bought  up  by  the  Globe  players  and  popular- 
ized. Shakspere's  contemporaries  give  him 
credit  for  a  talent  of  that  sort.  They  have 
come  down  to  us  with  his  name  attached  to 
them  because  he  was  the  latest  editor ;  because 
his  additions  had  increased  their  vogue,  and 
because  Heminge  and  Condell,  recognizing 
these  facts,  and  not  much  caring  what  the 
original  authorship  might  be,  sent  them 
forth  as  by  William  Shakespeare. 

It  is  contended  by  some  Baconians,  that 

Shakspere  was  entirely  illiterate,  and  this  is 

a  most  obscure  subject,  for,  as  a  matter  of 

fact,  no  specimen  of  his  handwriting  has 

170 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

come  down  to  us,  except  half  a  dozen  sig- 
natures, which  do  not  sustain  the  claim  made 
by  Heminge  and  Condell  that  he  was  a  ready 
writer,  and  which,  in  fact,  the  unbelieving 
assert,  were  written  by  the  law  clerks  who 
prepared  the  documents  to  which  they  are 
appended. 

It  is  undoubtedly  very  disconcerting  to 
be  obliged  to  confess  that  no  scraps  of  the 
handwriting  of  so — supposedly — celebrated 
and  voluminous  a  writer  should  exist,  and 
those  who  prefer  to  believe  in  the  perfect 
illiteracy  of  the  gentle  Shakespeare  are  able 
to  remind  us  that  a  large  part  of  the  work 
of  the  clowns  was  extemporaneous;  Robert 
Wilson  and  Richard  Tarleton  were  noted  for 
"a  quick,  extemporall  wit,"  and  it  is  there- 
fore not  impossible  that  their  parts  may  have 
been  thus  devised,  and  later  written  down 
by  others. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  in 
the  total  illiteracy  of  William  Shakspere, 
even  if  his  parents  and  his  children  were 
totally  illiterate.  As  a  prominent  member  of 
the  Company,  acting  in  principal  parts,  it 
171 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

would  seem  that  he  should  have  been  able  to 
read;  and  in  his  business  as  money  lender, 
hardly  less  important  to  him  than  the  stage, 
he  could  hardly  have  succeeded  without  some 
knowledge  of  writing,  although  the  public 
scrivener  was  always  in  that  day,  at  the  serv- 
ice of  the  unlettered ;  nor  could  he  have  done 
what  Jonson  said  he  did  without  some  learn- 
ing. The  field  is  open  for  conjecture. 

My  own  firm  conviction,  based  upon  what 
we  know,  and  upon  the  balancing  of  proba- 
bilities in  what  we  do  not  positively  know,  is 
that  Shakspere  really  did  contribute  some- 
thing to  the  plays,  and  that  his  contribution 
was  the  writing  of  the  comic  parts ;  and  that 
his  contemporaries  understood  this  to  be  the 
case. 

The  Shaksperian  touch  can  very  readily 
be  recognized  in  the  plays;  there  is  nothing 
anywhere  else  just  like  the  Shakspere  buf- 
foonery. When,  at  the  performance  of  a 
Shakespeare  play,  some  exquisite  scene  is  fol- 
lowed by  an  irrelevant  and  grotesque  in- 
trusion of  the  buffoons  and  drunken  clowns, 
172 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

with  the  coarse  haw-hawings  and  idiotic 
quibblings  which  so  offended  Voltaire,  the 
auditor  may  confidently  say,  "here  is  the  real 
Shakspere — Will  Shakspere  of  Stratford." 
These  fooleries  delighted  the  groundlings  of 
the  day;  they  delighted  Queen  Elizabeth, 
whose  taste  was  not  of  the  most  refined ;  and 
they  made  the  plays  profitable. 

It  is  in  the  low  comedy  portions  of  the 
plays,  and  in  them  alone,  that  are  to  be  found 
the  Stratfordian  allusions  which  identify  the 
writer  as  a  Stratford  man. 

Students  find  many  names  and  references 
in  the  plays  which  indicate  that  some  War- 
wickshire man  had  a  share  in  their  composi- 
tion. 

Michael  Drayton  was  a  Warwickshire 
man;  he  was  a  successful  playwright,  and 
has  been  put  forward  as  a  part  author  of  the 
plays;  but  he  did  not  come  from  Stratford. 

The  Taming  of  the  Shrew.    The  following 

lines  from  the 

Induction  to  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  con- 
tain several  Stratfordian  allusions. 
173 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  drunken  tinker  says ; 

1.  Sly.  What,  would  you  make  me 
mad?  Am  I  not  Christopher 
Slie,  old  Slies  sonne  of  Burton- 
heath,  by  byrth  a  Pedler,  by 
education  a  Cardmaker,  by 
transmutation  a  Beare-heard, 
and  now  by  present  profession 
a  Tinker.  Aske  Marrian 
Racket  the  fat  Alewife  of  Win- 
cot  if  shee  know  me  not ;  if  she 
say  I  am  not  XIIII  d.  on  the 
score  for  sheere  Ale,  score  me 
up  for  the  lyingst  knave  in 
Christendome. 

The  above  lines,  which  do  not  occur  in 
the  old  play  of  1594,  contain  four  references 
to  Stratford; 

a.  Sly  was  a  Stratford  name,  and  al- 
though the  drunkard  in  the  old 
play  was  one  "Slie,"  yet  the 
name  has  been  localised  by  the 
addition  of  the  Christopher, 
174 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

since  one  of  that  name  is  men- 
tioned in  Greene's  diary  in  1616, 
as  living  at  Stratford. 

b.  Burton-heath,   or  Barton  on  the 

heath,  a  few  miles  to  the  south- 
east of  Stratford,  was  the  home 
of  Edmund  Lambert,  who 
loaned  John  Shakspere  40  pds 
on  the  Asbies  property  in  1578. 

c.  Hacket  is  a  name  which  still  sur- 

vives in  the  neighborhood. 

d.  Wincot,  or  Wilmcote,  was  near  by. 

The  Asbies'  property  of  Mary 

Arden  was  situated  at  Wilmcote. 

The  Tamynge  of  a  Shrew  was  entered  in 

the  Stationer's  Register  on  May  2  1594,  and 

was  published  anonymously  in  the  same  year, 

as  "A  pleasant  Conceited  History  called  the 

Tamynge  of  a  Shrew,  As  it  was  sundry  times 

acted    by    the    Earle    of    Pembrook    his 

servants."    It  was  played  at  Henslowe's  on 

June  11    1594.     But  it  was  known  before 

1594,  since  Greene  alluded  to  it  in  his  Mena- 

phon,  which  was  published  in  1589. 

175 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  old  play  contained  the  Induction, 
with  a  'Slie,'  but  without  the  Stratford  allu- 
sions. It  ended  by  Slie  being  carried  in  in 
his  own  apparel  and  left  outside  the  tavern 
door  still  asleep.  The  tapster  awakes  him, 
and  he  concludes  that  he  has  been  dreaming. 

The  old  play  is  undoubtedly  the  original 
from  which  the  play  as  we  know  it  was 
developed.  The  folio  of  1623  contains  1124 
lines  more  than  the  quarto  of  1594.  The  In- 
duction alone  contains  297  lines,  while  the 
Induction  of  the  old  play  contained  only  172 
lines.  Fleay  thinks  that  the  original  was  by 
Kyd,  remodeled  by  Lodge,  and  added  to  by 
Shakespeare. 

Now,  if  we  turn  to  the  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor,  we  shall  find  further  evidence  of 
growth  as  the  result  of  years  of  representa- 
tion. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor.     This  play  was 

first  published 

in  1602,  as  "A  most  pleasant  and  excellent 

Conceited  Comedie  of  Syr  John  Falstaff ,  and 

the  Merrie  Wives  of  Windsor,  by  William 

176 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare,  As  it  hath  bene  divers  times 
Acted  by  the  Right  Honourable  My  Lord 
Chamberlain's  Servantes,  Both  before  her 
Majestic  and  elsewhere." 

It  contained  1620  lines;  the  present  play 
has  2701  lines;  an  addition  of  1081  lines. 

Our  folio  play  contains  the  following 
passages  of  interest  in  our  present  inquiry. 

2.     Act  I.  Scene  1. 

a.  Shal.  Sir  Hugh,  perswade  me 
not.  I  will  make  a  Star 
Chamber  matter  of  it;  if 
he  were  twenty  Sir  John 
Falstoffs,  he  shall  not 
abuse  Robert  Shallow 
Esquire. 

Slen.  In  the  County  of  Gloster, 
Justice  of  Peace  and 
Cor  am. 

Shal.  I  (Cosen  Slender)  and 
Cust-aloram. 

Slen.        I,  and  Rato  lorum  too, 
and  a  gentleman  borne, 
(Master  Parson)    who 
177 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

writes  himselfe  Armi- 
gero,  in  any  Bill,  War- 
rant, Quittance  or  Obli- 
gation, Armigero. 

Shal.  I  that  I  doe,  and  have 
done  any  time  these  three 
hundred  yeeres. 

Slen.  All  his  successors  (gone 
before  him)  have  don't, 
and  all  his  Ancestors 
(that  come  after  him) 
may;  they  may  give  the 
dozen  white  luces  in  their 
coate. 

Shal.        It  is  an  olde  Coate. 

Evans.  The  dozen  white  lowses 
doe  become  an  old  coat 
well;  it  agrees  well  pas- 
sant, it  is  a  familiar  beast 
to  man,  and  signifies 
love. 

•  •  •  • 

b.     M.Page.  I  am  glad  to  see  you, 
good  Master  Slender. 
178 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Slen.  How  do's  your  fallow 
Greyhound,  Sir,  I  heard 
say  he  was  outrun  on 
Cotsall. 

M.Pa.  It  could  not  be  Judg'd, 
Sir. 

•  •  •  • 

c.  Falstaff.  Now  Master  Shallow, 
you'll  complaine  of  me 
to  the  King? 

Shal.        Knight,  you  have  beaten 

my  men,  kill'd  my  deere, 

and    broke    open    my 

lodge. 

Fal.         But    not    kiss'd    your 

Keeper's  daughter? 

The  old  play  contains  the  dispute  be- 
tween Shallow  and  Falstaff  in  an  undevel- 
oped form; 

Shal.  N'ere  talke  to  me,  lie 
make  a  Star  Chamber 
matter  of  it. 

Fal.         Now  M.  Shallow,  you'le 
179 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

complain  of  me  to  the 
Counsell,  I  hear? 
Shal.  Sir  John,  Sir  John,  you 
have  hurt  my  keeper, 
kild  my  dogs,  stolne  my 
deere  &c. 

Among  the  changes  which  differentiate 
the  new  play  from  the  old,  is  the  elimination 
of  profane  expressions.  This  was  the  result 
of  parliamentary  legislation  in  1605-6. 
Another  is  the  addition  of  the  reference  to 
the  Cotsall,  or  Cotswold  games  which  were 
revived  subsequently  to  the  date  of  the 
quarto,  and  were  held  on  the  Cotswold  Hills, 
near  Stratford. 

The  bashful  lover,  the  riddles,  and  the 
allusion  to  Greene  Sleeves,  a  popular  song, 
are  additions  which  were  added  from  time 
to  time. 

The  white  luces  of  Justice  Shallow  are 
also  additions  which  were  intended  to  touch 
up  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  of  Charlecote,  four 
miles  from  Stratford,  and  the  addition  testi- 
fies to  Will  Shakspere's  hand  in  the  work 
180 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

of  enlargement,  for  the  old  story  of  his  deer 
stealing  in  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's  park,  and  of 
his  consequent  punishment,  still  commands 
belief;  although  some  writers,  among  whom 
is  Mrs.  Stopes,  have  endeavored  to  dis- 
credit it. 

Mrs.  Stopes  argues  that,  as  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy  died  in  1600,  and  the  allusions  to  luces 
and  coats  of  arms  did  not  appear  in  the  1602 
or  the  1619  editions  of  the  play,  it  is  im- 
probable that  the  reference  so  long  after  his 
death,  could  have  been  intended  for  him. 
Can  such  anger  dwell  in  divine  minds?  ex- 
claims in  effect,  Mrs.  Stopes. 

A  second  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  was  living 
in  London  in  1595,  who  died  in  1605,  and 
who  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  the  third  Sir 
Thomas  Lucy,  who  created  a  Park  at  Charle- 
cote  and  who  did  make  a  Star  Chamber  mat- 
ter of  a  deer  stealing  affair  which  occurred 
on  his  Worcester  estate. 

But  Mrs.  Stopes's  attempt  to  disentangle 
the  luces,  the  Lucys,  and  the  deer  stealing 
episode,  are  not  entirely  successful.    In  the 
181 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

first  place,  the  play  of  1602  contains  the 
Star  Chamber  threat  and  the  deer  stealing 
charge,  and  was  published  prior  to  the  com- 
plaint of  Sir  Thomas  3d;  and  in  the  second 
place,  if  the  white  luces  and  the  old  coat 
allusions  did  not  refer  to  the  Lucys,  to  whom 
did  they  allude? 

In  1592  on  Sept.  25,  Sir  Thomas  Lucy 
and  other  Commisioners,  reported  John 
Shakspere,  the  actor's  father,  as  one  of  nine 
recusants  who  were  liable  to  fines  for  non- 
attendance  at  church  services.  If  the  deer 
stealing  episode  ever  occurred,  this  report 
could  hardly  have  failed  to  revive  the  ancient 
grudge  in  the  mind  of  Will  Shakspere,  and 
whether  it  did  or  not,  it  may  have  had  a 
share  in  the  imagining  of  Justice  Shallow's 
old  coat  and  white  luces. 

Our  interest  in  the  matter,  however,  is 
limited  to  establishing  the  Stratfordian  char- 
acter of 'the  passage,  in  order  to  connect  Will 
Shakspere  with  its  composition. 

The  Famous  Victories  of  Henry  the  Fifth  &c. 
This  play  was  registered  on  May  14, 1594, 

182 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

but  it  was  first  published  in  1598,  in  black 
letter.  It  was,  however,  a  much  older  play, 
since  Tarleton,  who  died  in  1588,  acted 
the  part  of  the  clown  Dericke  in  it. 

The  play  began  with  the  trouble  over 
the  robbery  of  a  carrier  by  one  of  Prince 
Henry's  men,  who  is  arrested.  The  Prince 
rescues  him,  and  strikes  the  Chief  Justice, 
in  accordance  with  the  legend.  Then  fol- 
low the  King's  reproaches,  the  repentance 
of  the  Prince,  his  assumption  of  the  Crown, 
and  the  death  of  Henry  IV.  The  new  King 
throws  over  his  old  associates,  and  defies 
a  French  embassy.  He  besieges  and  cap- 
tures Harfleur,  wins  the  battle  of  Agincourt, 
and  the  play  ends  with  the  submission  of 
the  French  princes,  and  Henry's  betrothal  to 
the  French  Princess  Katherine. 

A  patriotic  play,  such  as  this,  was  nat- 
urally very  popular,  and  it  furnished  the 
skeleton  upon  which  three  Henry  plays  of 
Shakespeare  were  built;  Henry  IV,  parts  1 
and  2,  and  Henry  V.  We  shall  see  to  what 
extent  it  was  expanded. 
183 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

1  Henry  IV.     This    was    first    published 

anonymously  in  1598.  The 
text  of  the  quarto  was  quite  perfect.  There 
were  in  all,  eight  editions  before  the  folio 
of  1623,  and  all  of  them,  except  the  first, 
attribute  the  play  to  Shakespeare. 

2  Henry  IV.     The   first   and  only  quarto 

edition  of  this  play  was  pub- 
lished anonymously  in  1600.  It  is  thought 
to  have  been  written  before  the  first  part, 
as,  although  Oldcastle  was  altered  to  Fal- 
staff  before  the  first  part  was  published,  in 
1598,  the  name  Oldcastle  is  retained  in  one 
place  in  the  quarto  of  the  second  part.  And, 
since  Jonson  mentions  Silence  in  "  Every 
Man  out  of  his  Humour,"  in  1599,  the  sec- 
ond part  of  Henry  IV  must  have  been  played 
not  later  than  1598-9. 

The  differences  between  the  text  of  the 
quarto  and  the  folio  indicate  that  the  quarto 
of  2  Henry  IV  represented  the  play  as  it 
was  acted.  The  passages  which  are  omitted 
in  the  folio  are  the  Falstaffian  scenes,  which 
were  liked  by  the  actors  because  of  their 
184 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

popularity,  while  some  of  the  historical 
scenes  are  omitted  in  the  quarto  as  tedious, 
and  less  popular  than  the  comic  scenes. 

Henry  V.  Although  "Harey  the  Vth"  was 
played  at  Henslowe's  on  May 
14,  1592,  the  first  quarto  was  not  published 
until  much  later;  in  1600,  and  anonymously. 
It  contains  only  about  one  half  the  number 
of  Henry  V's  lines,  but  the  speeches  of  Pistol 
are  given  in  full. 

Pistol  must  have  been  a  much  liked 
character.  He  is  named  on  the  title  page  of 
the  quarto  of  2  Henry  IV  as  "Swaggering 
Pistol,"  and  in  the  quarto  of  Henry  V  as  the 
"Antient  Pistol." 

The  "Famous  Victories"  was  "plaid  by 
the  Queen's  Majestie's  Players,"  2  Henry 
IV  and  Henry  V  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain's 
Company. 

The  expansion  of  the  "Famous  Vic- 
tories," which  contains  but  1641  lines,  into 
the  three  Henry  plays,  which  contain,  in  the 
quartos  7629  lines,  and  in  the  later  folio  of 
1623,  9869  lines,  testifies  at  once  to  the  im- 
185 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

mense  popularity  of  the  subject,  and  to  the 
manner  of  its  development.  Oldcastle,  who 
in  the  old  play,  made  a  single  appearance 
with  but  six  lines  to  speak,  became  Falstaff, 
and  his  drolleries  were  infinitely  extended. 
Bardolph,  Nym,  Pistol,  Poins  and  Peto,  the 
Irish,  Scotch  and  Welsh  captains;  and  Shal- 
low and  Silence,  are  all  new  creations  and  ad- 
ditions to  the  old  play. 

The  comic  scenes  in  the  three  folio  plays 
constitute  about  one  third  part  of  the  whole, 
and  are  evidently  the  result  of  growth  in  re- 
sponse to  the  popular  demand  for  amuse- 
ment. 

It  is  in  these  comic  scenes,  and  more  par- 
ticularly, in  2  Henry  IV,  that  we  find  a  num- 
ber of  Stratfordian  allusions. 

Thus  we  find; 

3.     2  Henry  IV.   1.   2.     Falstaff  is 
speaking; 

a.     Fal.     He    may    keep    his    owne 

Grace,  but  he  is  almost  out 

of  mind,  I  can  assure  him. 

What  said  M.  Dumbledon 

186 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

about    the    satten    for    my 
short  cloake,  and  slops? 
It  appears  that  Dumbledon  is  a  Stratford 
name.   In  the  same  play  we  have; 

b.     Act  II.  4. 

1st  Drawer.  What  hast  thou  brought 
there?  Apple- Johns  ? 
thou  know'st  Sir  John 
cannot  endure  an 
Apple- John. 

2d  Draw.  Thou  say'st  true.  The 
Prince  once  set  a  Dish 
of  Apple-Johns  before 
him  and  told  him  there 
were  five  more  Sir 
Johns;  and  putting  off 
his  Hat,  said,  I  will  now 
take  my  leave  of  these 
sixe  drie,  round,  old- 
wither 'd  Knights. 

According  to  Miss  Rose  Kingsley,  who 
has  written  upon  "Shakespeare  in  Warwick- 
shire/' apple  Johns  are  still  to  be  found  at 
Dancing  Marston.    But  it  may  have  been  a 
187 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

common  expression,  since  Jonson  uses  the 
term  in  "Every  Man  out  of  his  Humour," 
where  one  Shift  says,  "as  I  am  a  poor  esquire 
about  the  town  here,  they  call  me  master 
apple  John." 

In  2  Henry  IV.  III.  2.  the  author  makes 
another  attack  upon  the  Lucys  in  the  per- 
son of  Shallow; 

c.  Shal.  I  was  calPd  anything:  and 
I  would  have  done  any- 
thing indeede  too,  and 
roundly  too.  There  was  I, 
and  little  John  Doit  of 
Staffordshire,  and  blacke 
George  Bare,  and  Francis 
Pick  -  bone,  and  Will 
Squele,  a  Cot-sal-man,  you 
had  not  foure  such 
Swindge-bucklers  in  all 
the  Innes  of  Court  againe. 

Fal.       .     .     .    This  same  starved 
Justice  hath  done  nothing 
but    prate    to    me    of    the 
188 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

wildnesse  of  his  Youth, 
and  the  Feates  he  hath  done 
about  Turnball-street,  and 
every  third  word  a  Lye 
.  .  .  he  was  for  all  the 
world,  like  a  forked  Rad- 
ish, with  a  Head  fantas- 
tically carved  upon  it  with 
a  Knife  ...  If  the 
young  Dace  be  a  Bayt  for 
the  old  Pike,  I  see  no  rea- 
son, in  the  Law  of  Nature, 
but  I  may  snap  at  him. 

d,  And  in  Act  V.  1. 

Shal.  Well  conceited  Davy: 
about  thy  Businesse,  Davy. 

Davy.  I  beseech  you  sir,  to  coun- 
tenance William  Visor  of 
Woncot  against  Clement 
Perkes  of  the  hill. 

Shal.     There     are     many     com- 
plaints, Davy,  against  that 
Visor,  that  Visor  is  an  ar- 
189 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

rant  Knave,  on  my  knowl- 
edge. 

Davy.  I  graunt  your  Worship 
that  he  is  a  knave  Sir,  but 
yet,  Heaven  forbid  Sir,  but 
a  Knave  should  have  some 
Countenance  at  his  friends 
request. 

This  William  Visor  was  a  neighbor  of 
the  Ardens  at  Wilmcote,  and  there  was  a 
John  Perkes  of  Snitterfield,  whose  daugh- 
ter married  Robert  Webbe,  a  cousin  of  Will 
Shakspere's.  Miss  Kingsley  says  that  Cherry 
Orchard  farm,  at  Weston,  two  miles  from 
Stratford,  is  still  known  as  the  Hill  farm. 

Bardolph  was  the  name  of  a  Chamber- 
lain of  Stratford  in  1585-6,  and  a  further 
coincidence  which  has  been  noted  to  account 
for  the  connection  of  Falstaff,  or  Oldcastle, 
with  Bardolph,  is  found  in  the  fact  that  a 
Sir  Roger  Cobham,  or  Oldcastle,  was  mar- 
ried to  an  Ann  Bardolph. 

Poins  and  Peto  are  Warwickshire  names, 
and  Captain  Fluellen  may  have  had  as  a 
190 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

prototype  one  William  Fluellen,  who  was 
one  of  the  nine  Stratford  recusants  already 
alluded  to. 

Miss  Kingsley  makes  much  of  an  ex- 
pression used  by  Ulysses  in  Troilus  and 
Cressida,  III,  3,  "The  fool  slides  o'er  the  ice 
that  you  should  break,"  as  having  been 
copied  from  "Foole  upon  Foole,"  a  book 
published  in  1600  by  Robert  Armin,  Shak- 
spere's  fellow  actor;  wherein  the  same  ex- 
pression is  made  use  of  in  relating  an  inci- 
dent said  to  have  occurred  at  Evesham  on 
the  Avon,  about  ten  miles  below  Stratford. 
There  is  of  course,  no  ground  for  supposing 
that  Shakspere  was  the  only  person  who 
had  access  to  Armin's  book,  or  who  might 
have  made  use  of  an  expression  which  had 
caught  his  fancy. 

We  meet  the  "poor  Johns"  again  in  the 
Tempest,  II.  2.,  where  Trinculo  says; 

"A  fish,  hee  smels  like  a  fish;  a 
very  ancient  and  fishlike  smell;  a 
kinde  of,  not  of  the  newest,  poore- 
John  &c." 

191 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

We  will  leave  to  those  who  believe  in 
the  identity  of  the  author  of  Love's  Labors 
Lost  and  of  the  Tempest,  and  in  his  immense 
growth  in  spirituality  during  the  intervening 
years,  the  problem  of  explaining  why  the 
comedy  of  one  of  his  earliest  plays  should  be 
so  artificial  and  scholarly,  and  that  of  one 
of  his  latest  so  indecently  coarse. 

Other  Warwickshire  expressions  and  al- 
lusions are  to  be  found  in  the  plays ;  in  fact, 
it  is  said  that  nearly  every  English  County 
is  represented  in  allusions  to  local  customs 
or  dialects;  but,  with  the  exception  of  Sir 
Roland  De  Boys  and  to  the  Forest  of  Arden, 
in  As  you  Like  it,  there  are  no  other  dis- 
tinctively Stratfordian  references  in  the 
plays.  And  I  will  again  remind  the  reader 
that  as  Michael  Drayton,  although  best 
known  to  us  as  a  poet,  was  a  successful  play- 
wright, and  a  Warwickshire  man,  references 
to  Warwickshire  in  general  may  be  attributed 
to  him  with  equal  probability  as  to  Will 
Shakspere. 

192 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Such  then,  are  the  portions  of  the  plays 
with  which  we  may,  with  some  certainty,  as- 
sociate the  name  of  Will  Shakspere  of  Strat- 
ford, and  we  can  recognize  without  difficulty, 
in  similar  scenes,  the  same  hand  elsewhere  in 
the  plays. 

It  is  difficult  to  conceive  that  Bacon,  or 
any  town-bred  man,  could  have  given  us  the 
Dogberrys,  the  Shallows,  and  the  country 
bumpkins  who  wander  on  and  off  the  scenes, 
often  quite  irrelevantly  and  without  any 
part  in  the  development  of  the  tale. 

But  Will  Shakspere  was  of  the  soil  him- 
self; he  knew  such  people  in  the  flesh,  and 
was  familiar  with  their  thought  and  speech. 
He  had  the  wit  to  reproduce  them,  and  the 
reality  of  his  characters,  and  the  human 
nature  in  them,  reached  his  audiences,  and, 
much  more  than  the  fine  literary  qualities  of 
the  dramas,  secured  their  success. 

He  popularised  old  plays,  and  years  of 
representation  developed  them.  In  time  the 
original  authors  were  forgotten  by  the  many. 
193 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

This,  in  effect,  is  what  Greene  and  Jon- 
son  said  of  Shakspere;  and  it  explains  the 
sort  of  success  he  had;  and  it  also  explains 
his  personal  insignificance  and  obscurity. 

In  a  word,  it  explains  what  has  been 
called  the  mystery  of  William  Shakspere 
of  Stratford. 


194 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

We  have  now  reached  the  extreme  limit 
of  solid  ground,  and,  to  pursue  the  subject 
farther,  must  venture  upon  the  sea  of  con- 
jecture. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  guided  by  facts, 
and  by  conclusions,  more  or  less  disputable 
it  is  true,  but  which  nevertheless  have  been 
deduced  not  unreasonably  from  facts.  We 
are  tolerably  certain  that  Will  Shakspere  was 
not  the  man  to  write  genius  into  the  plays, 
and  that  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  did  not,  and 
never  during  his  lifetime,  was  credited  with 
having  done  so.  It  is  also  tolerably  certain 
that  most  of  the  plays  had  a  long  history 
before  they  took  the  form  in  which  they  have 
reached  us,  and  that  many  minds,  both  of 
writers  and  of  actors,  of  which  last  Will 
Shakspere  was  one,  had  a  share  in  shaping 
them. 

195 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

But  if  any  one  master  mind,  outside  of 
the  circle  of  writers  previously  herein  named, 
impressed  his  greatness  and  noble  personality 
upon  the  plays,  research  has  failed  to  dis- 
cover him.  He  himself  has  been  silent  as  to 
his  share  in  the  work,  and  history  has  been 
silent  about  him.  Unlike  Marlowe,  Dekker, 
Beaumont,  Jonson  and  the  rest,  whose  work 
is  known  and  recognized,  that  greater  than 
them  all  lived  unrecognized,  and  even  to  this 
day  "the  greatest  of  all  our  English  poets  is 
only  a  name."  He  is  the  Silent  Shakespeare. 

What  if  their  plots  be  absurd,  impossible 
and  without  moral  sense ;  the  comedy  vulgar 
buffoonery,  and  the  ladies'  hussies;  all  of 
which  Dr.  Johnson  discovered  long  ago; 
what,  if  even  as  plays,  the  Shakespeare  plays 
have  been  superseded  by  modern  works  which 
some  of  us  may  prefer  to  witness;  as  liter- 
ature the  world  has  proclaimed  them 
supreme. 

Who  then  was  Shakespeare;  did  such  a 
being  exist  apart  from  the  collaborators  who, 
as  we  now  know,  worked  on  the  Shakespeare 
plays? 

196 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

There  must  be  only  a  few  of  the  plays 
which  do  not  bear  testimony  to  the  partici- 
pation of  other  hands,  but  it  is  also  perhaps 
true  that  in  nearly  all  of  them  there  is  some- 
thing of  what  we  call  "Shakespeare." 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  determine 
the  authorship  sought  for  by  internal  evi- 
dence gathered  from  study  of  the  plays  them- 
selves; thus  they  have  been  attributed  to 
Bacon  because  of  a  certain  familiarity  with 
legal  terms;  to  Raleigh  because  of  a  similar 
familiarity  with  nautical  terms,  this  among 
other  things;  and  to  Dekker  and  others  be- 
cause of  characteristics  of  style. 

But  we  might  as  well  look  for  the  author 
in  the  lists  of  physicians,  or  of  naturalists,  or 
of  philosophers,  for  there  is  something  of  all 
these  to  be  found  in  the  plays.  While  in 
many  places  the  frequent  occurrence  of  legal 
phrases  is  such  as  to  suggest  a  mind  trained 
to  their  habitual  use,  there  is  nothing  of  this 
that  any  one  of  half  a  dozen  of  the  collabo- 
rators could  not  have  furnished ;  and  no  spe- 
cial knowledge  of  the  sea  shown  that  any  one 
197 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

of  half  the  population  of  the  island  might  not 
have  possessed. 

Perhaps  the  most  illuminating  clue  to  the  N 
undiscovered  authorship  of  the  plays  to  be 
derived  from  their  critical  study  is  found  in 
the  conclusion  that  they  are  permeated 
throughout  by  Roman  Catholic  and  aristo- 
cratic sentiments.  This  vein  has  been  well 
worked  by  Mr.  Geo.  Wilkes,  and,  even  after 
making  due  allowance  for  a  fact  which  he 
ignored ;  that  in  Shakespeare's  day  the  stage 
was  a  target  for  the  dislike  of  the  Puritans; 
and  that  playwrights  and  actors  retaliated  by 
lampooning  the  Puritans  in  their  plays; 
enough  remains  of  an  intimate  knowledge 
of,  and  of  reverence  for  Roman  Catholic  doc- 
trine and  practice  to  make  it  clear  that  some 
one  much  in  sympathy  with  that  cult  had  a 
large  share  in  the  writing  of  some  of  the  most 
beautiful  passages  in  the  plays.  This  fact, 
as  Mr.  Wilkes  justly  remarks,  excludes 
Bacon  from  the  list  of  possibilities. 

So,  too,  with  the  aristocratic  tendencies  of 
the  plays;    only  a  single  one,  the  Merry 
198 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Wives  of  Windsor,  is  without  its  titled  per- 
sonages; in  only  two,  As  you  Like  It,  and 
Timon  of  Athens,  do  we  find  the  poor  well 
spoken  of;  and  Mr.  Wilkes  describes  this 
feature  of  the  plays  as  servility  to  rank  and 
contempt  for  the  poor. 

Such  a  cast  of  mind  is  not  incompatible 
with  great  talents,  for  Bacon's  character  was 
of  this  description.  But  it  is  a  harsh  judg- 
ment to  pronounce  upon  the  author,  and  by 
no  means  necessarily  a  true  one.  It  is  equally  \ 
within  the  limits  of  probability  that  the  writer 
held  a  genuine  belief  in  the  value  to  the 
nation  of  nobility,  and  a  low  opinion  of  the/ 
vulgar.  If  Carlyle  could  characterise  the 
population  of  England  in  his  day  as  "mostly 
fools,"  and  the  founders  of  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  could  feel  such  distrust 
of  the  people  as  that  much-respected  docu- 
ment evidences,  surely  an  aristocrat  of  Eliza- 
beth's England  may  well  be  supposed  to  en- 
tertain similar,  but  intensified  views. 

In  the  Nineteenth  Century  of  May,  1906, 
Sir  Sidney  Lee  called  attention  to  the  dis- 
199 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

covery  by  Mr.  James  Greenstreet  among  the 
Domestic  State  Papers  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
reign,  of  two  letters  dated  June  30  1599, 
from  London  to  Antwerp  and  Venice,  in 
which  it  is  stated  that  the  Earl  of  Derby  "is 
busyed  only  in  penning  Comedies  for  the 
common  players." 

Mr.  Greenstreet  published  his  discovery 
in  the  "Genealogist"  in  1891  and  1892,  in 
three  articles,  in  which  he  attempted  to  prove 
that  the  Earl  was  the  real  Shakespeare. 

It  is  perhaps  not  strange  that  a  devoted 
Stratfordian  should  not  have  thought  it 
worth  while  to  follow  up  the  investigation 
which  Mr.  Greenstreet's  death  closed,  and 
yet  there  are  circumstances  which  lend  con- 
siderable interest  and  importance  to  the  mat- 
ter. 

The  6th  Earl  of  the  Catholic  House  of 
Derby  was  William  Stanley,  whose  initials 
are  the  same  as  those  of  William  Shake- 
speare. 

More  important  is  the  fact  that  the  Stan- 
leys were  undoubtedly  in  close  touch  with 
200 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

the  Shakspere  players.  Ferdinando  Stanley, 
the  elder  brother  of  William  Stanley,  was 
the  Lord  Strange  who  maintained  the  thea- 
trical company  of  which  Will  Shakspere  was 
a  member.  This  patronage  was  continued 
after  he  became  Earl,  and  for  a  time  after 
his  death,  by  his  widow,  the  Countess  of 
Derby.  From  1594  until  1617  at  least,  Will- 
iam Stanley  maintained  his  connection  with 
the  stage. 

This  is  sufficiently  interesting  to  justify 
some  account  of  the  house  of  Derby,  and  of 
the  6th  Earl  in  particular;  taken  from  the 
Stanley  Papers,  and  from  the  above  men- 
tioned articles  of  Mr.  Greenstreet. 

The  4th  Earl  Henry  Stanley,  married 
Feb.  7,  1555,  Margaret 
Clifford,  who  was  descend- 
ed from  Charles  Brandon 
and  Mary  Tudor,  sister  of 
Henry  VIII.  He  died  Sept. 
25  1593,  and  was  succeed- 
ed by  his  eldest  son; 
201 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  5th  Earl  Ferdinando  Stanley,  who 
had  borne  the  title  of  Lord 
Strange  from  1572  until  his 
accession,  and  who  had 
maintained  the  theatrical 
company  known  as  Lord 
Strange's,  and  to  which 
Will  Shakspere  belonged 
from  about  1576-7.  Ferdi- 
nando died  within  a  year  on 
April  16  1594,  and  was 
succeeded  by  his  younger 
brother; 

The  6th  Earl  William  Stanley,  the  sub- 
ject of  this  sketch,  who  mar- 
ried almost  immediately,  on 
June  26  1594,  Elizabeth 
Vere,  daughter  of  the  17th 
Earl  of  Oxford. 

William  Stanley  was  born  in  London. 
In  1572,  says  Mr.  Greenstreet,  he  went  to 
St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  with  his  broth- 
ers, Lord  Strange  and  Francis  Stanley.  It 
seems  that  the  younger  brothers  had  dis- 
202 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

pleased  the  Queen  in  some  way,  for  she 
writes  under  date  of  Dec.  6  1571  to  Lord 
Strange  that  she  "is  sorry  not  to  have  found 
the  like  earnest  good  will  to  her  service  in 
his  brethren." 

In  1582  he  went  to  France  with  a  pre- 
ceptor, and  after  three  years  to  Spain,  where 
he  wounded  his  adversary  in  a  duel,  and  had 
to  escape  to  France  in  disguise. 

From  France  to  Italy,  High  Germany, 
Egypt,  the  Barbary  coast,  Palestine  and  to 
Constantinople,  where  he  was  put  into 
prison.  After  a  romantic  release,  he  went 
to  Russia  and  to  Greenland. 

In  1585  his  father,  the  4th  Earl,  with 
whom  he  was  a  favorite,  was  received  as 
Ambassador  to  the  Court  of  France;  and 
Mr.  Greenstreet  thinks  that  he  joined  the 
English  army  in  the  Netherlands,  as  a  sol- 
dier and  comrade  in  arms  of  the  Earl  of 
Southampton. 

He  was  at  home  again  from  December 
1587  to  July  1590,  as  may  be  learned  from 
the  records  of  Lathom  House,  one  of  the 
203 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

family  seats.  One  or  two  extracts  from  these 
records  follow; 

1587  — July  13,  14.   Lathom.    Leicesters 

troupe  played. 

Dec.    17.    Mr.   William   Stanley 

came  home  from  Chester. 

1588  —Oct.    12.     The    Queens    players 

came. 
1588-9  —Jan.   7  &   12.    Derbys,  or  Lord 

Stranges  players  played. 
1589-90— Jan.    22.      Sir    Edward    Fitton 

came  at  night. 

Sir  Edward  Fitton  was  the  father  of 
Mistress  Mary  Fitton,  whom  some  suppose 
to  be  the  Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets,  and 
Mr.  Greenstreet  suggests  that  William  Stan^~ 
ley  may  have  been  one  of  the  three  Wills  of/ 
the  Sonnets. 

The   Stanley  Papers  refer  to  William 

Stanley   as   the  great   Sir  William,   whose 

travels  and  martial  exploits  are  well  known. 

He  was   abroad  again  in   1594,  when 

Ferdinando  died,  and  returning  home,   at 

once  became  involved  in  litigation  with  his 

204 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

nieces  over  his  estates,  which  he  found  to  be 
held  by  four  Bishops  for  the  use  of  these 
two  ladies. 

He  was  made  K.  G.  on  April  23  1601; 
served  as  privy  counsellor  extraordinary 
from  March  to  May  1603,  and  was  appoint- 
ed Lord  Lieutenant  of  Lancashire  and 
Cheshire  on  Dec.  22  1607.  His  London 
residence  was  in  Canon  Row,  Westminster. 

Chapman  refers  to  him  in  his  preface  to 
the  Iliad  in  1594,  as  "most  ingenious 
Darby."  Addressing  his  friend,  Matthew 
Roydon,  he  says; 

"But  I  stay  this  spleen  when  I 
remember,  my  good  Matthew,  how 
joyfully  oftentimes  you  reported  un- 
to me  that  most  ingenious  Darby, 
deep  searching  Northumberland,  and 
skill  embracing  heir  of  Hunsdon  had 
most  profitably  entertained  learning 
in  themselves  to  the  vital  warmth  of 
freezing  science  and  to  the  admir- 
able lustre  of  their  true  nobility 
&c." 

205 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

William  Stanley's  connection  with  the 
stage  has  been  explained. 

Northumberland  maintained  a  company 
of  players  which  was  known  as  the  Lord 
Admiral's  Company. 

Hunsdon's  heir  was  George  Carey,  who 
succeeded  to  the  title  of  Lord  Hunsdon  upon 
the  death  of  his  father,  who  was  the  Lord 
Chamberlain  on  July  23  1596,  and  con- 
tinued to  be  the  patron  of  his  company, 
known  as  the  Lord  Chamberlain's. 

Thus  Chapman,  in  naming  Darby, 
Northumberland  and  Hunsdon,  was  paying 
court  to  three  famous  patrons  of  the  stage. 

In  1637  William  Stanley  surrendered 
his  estate,  sreserving  Ito  himself  only  tane 
thousand  pounds  a  year,  to  his  eldest  son 
James,  and  retired  to  a  country  house  on 
the  Dee,  near  Chester,  where  he  died  in 
1642. 

James  was  the  7th  Earl,  the  great  Earl, 
who  espoused  the  royalist  cause,  was  taken 
prisoner  after  the  battle  of  Worcester,  and 
was  beheaded  on  Oct.  15  1651. 
206 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

Since  William  Stanley,  at  once  soldier, 
statesman,  courtier  and  scholar,  was  con- 
nected with  the  stage  for  many  years;  first 
by  inheritance  from  his  brother,  and  later 
by  his  own  choice;  was  connected  with  the 
very  company  of  which  Will  Shakspere  was 
a  member;  and  was  himself  a  dramatist, 
busying  himself  in  1599  "only  in  writing 
comedies  for  the  common  players";  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  escape  the  conclusion  that  he  had 
a  hand  in  shaping  the  Shakespeare  plays. 

We  may  conceive  of  him  as  aiding  in 
the  revision  of  the  old  plays;  adding  per- 
haps, those  fine  passages  which  Will  Shak- 
spere and  his  fellows  sometimes  omitted  in 
representation  in  order  to  make  room  for 
their  own  buffooneries,  but  which  have  hap- 
pily been  preserved  to  enrich  all  time. 

The  writer  has  now  executed  his  design 
of  setting  out  the  considerations  which  make 
for  the  rejection  of  the  view  that  Will  Shak- 
spere was  our  Shakespeare.  Volumes  might 
have  been  written — have  been  written — on 
the  subject,  and  to  treat  it  with  any  larger 
207 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

degree  of  detail  would  involve  much  repe- 
tition of  that  which  has  been  written  by 
others,  and  which  is  accessible  to  all. 

A  brief  summary  of  the  argument  may 

be  useful,  and  will  make  a  suitable  ending. 

The  record  of  Will  Shakspere's 

life  traverses  the  theory  that  he  was 

a  great  genius. 

His  contemporaries  assigned  to 
him  an  inferior  and  not  altogether 
creditable  role  in  the  production  of 
the  plays;  a  fact  to  which  very  little 
attention  has  been  given. 

He  did  not  write  the  poems.  His 
patron  was  not  Southampton,  but 
Lord  Strange.  In  the  Sonnets, 
which  are  undoubtedly  by  the  same 
hand  as  the  Venus,  and  the  Lucrece, 
it  is  distinctly  stated  that  the  name 
under  which  they  appeared,  William 
Shakespeare,  was  but  a  pen  name. 

There  is  no  evidence,  worthy  of 
the  name,  that  the  plays  were  his. 
The    one    and    only    contemporary 
208 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

writer  who  distinctly  identified  the 
actor  with  the  genius,  namely  Ben 
Jonson,  did  so  only  in  his  well-known 
ode,  "To  the  memory  of  my  be- 
loved." In  the  title,  as  well  as  in  the 
body  of  the  ode,  he  contradicted 
every  other  known  utterance  by  him, 
to  the  number  of  half  a  dozen,  on 
the  subject.  Every  other  remark 
made  by  him,  or  reported  of  him, 
shows  that  he  did  not  like  Will 
Shakspere,  and  indeed,  regarded 
him  as  a  very  ordinary  person. 

The  history  of  the  plays,  and 
the  internal  evidences  of  style,  fix 
the  authorship  in  great  part  else- 
where. 

The  occurrence  of  Stratfordian  al- 
lusions only  in  the  comic  scenes; 
which  scenes  are  usually  irrelevant  to 
the  action  of  the  drama,  and  distinct- 
ly differing  in  style,  point  to  the  ex- 
planation that  these  were  the  contri- 
butions of  Will  Shakspere. 
209 


THE    SILENT    SHAKESPEARE 

The  suggestion,  first  offered  by 
Mr.  Greenstreet,  as  to  the  genius 
who  stamped  his  individuality  upon 
the  plays,  plausibly  answers  the 
question  "Who  was  Shakespeare?" 
by  replying;  William  Stanley  was 
William  Shakespeare. 


Finis. 


210 


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